Guidance for the National Healthcare Disparities Report

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Publisher : National Academies Press
ISBN 13 : 0309085195
Total Pages : 215 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 (9 download)

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Book Synopsis Guidance for the National Healthcare Disparities Report by : Institute of Medicine

Download or read book Guidance for the National Healthcare Disparities Report written by Institute of Medicine and published by National Academies Press. This book was released on 2002-10-25 with total page 215 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Agency for Healthcare Research Quality commissioned the Institute of Medicine establish a committee to provide guidance on the National Healthcare Disparities Report is of access to health care, utilization of services, and the services received. The committee was asked to con population characteristics as race and ethnicity, society status, and geographic location. It was also asked to examine factors that included possible data sources and types of measures for the report.

Future Directions for the National Healthcare Quality and Disparities Reports

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Publisher : National Academies Press
ISBN 13 : 0309159725
Total Pages : 247 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 (91 download)

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Book Synopsis Future Directions for the National Healthcare Quality and Disparities Reports by : Institute of Medicine

Download or read book Future Directions for the National Healthcare Quality and Disparities Reports written by Institute of Medicine and published by National Academies Press. This book was released on 2010-08-10 with total page 247 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: As the United States devotes extensive resources to health care, evaluating how successfully the U.S. system delivers high-quality, high-value care in an equitable manner is essential. At the request of Congress, the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) annually produces the National Healthcare Quality Report (NHQR) and the National Healthcare Disparities Report (NHDR). The reports have revealed areas in which health care performance has improved over time, but they also have identified major shortcomings. After five years of producing the NHQR and NHDR, AHRQ asked the IOM for guidance on how to improve the next generation of reports. The IOM concludes that the NHQR and NHDR can be improved in ways that would make them more influential in promoting change in the health care system. In addition to being sources of data on past trends, the national healthcare reports can provide more detailed insights into current performance, establish the value of closing gaps in quality and equity, and project the time required to bridge those gaps at the current pace of improvement.

Envisioning the National Health Care Quality Report

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Publisher : National Academies Press
ISBN 13 : 030907343X
Total Pages : 257 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 (9 download)

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Book Synopsis Envisioning the National Health Care Quality Report by : Institute of Medicine

Download or read book Envisioning the National Health Care Quality Report written by Institute of Medicine and published by National Academies Press. This book was released on 2001-04-22 with total page 257 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How good is the quality of health care in the United States? Is quality improving? Or is it suffering? While the average person on the street can follow the state of the economy with economic indicators, we do not have a tool that allows us to track trends in health care quality. Beginning in 2003, the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) will produce an annual report on the national trends in the quality of health care delivery in the United States. AHRQ commissioned the Institute of Medicine (IOM) to help develop a vision for this report that will allow national and state policy makers, providers, consumers, and the public at large to track trends in health care quality. Envisioning the National Health Care Quality Report offers a framework for health care quality, specific examples of the types of measures that should be included in the report, suggestions on the criteria for selecting measures, as well as advice on reaching the intended audiences. Its recommendations could help the national health care quality report to become a mainstay of our nation's effort to improve health care.

Unequal Treatment

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Publisher : National Academies Press
ISBN 13 : 030908265X
Total Pages : 781 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 (9 download)

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Book Synopsis Unequal Treatment by : Institute of Medicine

Download or read book Unequal Treatment written by Institute of Medicine and published by National Academies Press. This book was released on 2009-02-06 with total page 781 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Racial and ethnic disparities in health care are known to reflect access to care and other issues that arise from differing socioeconomic conditions. There is, however, increasing evidence that even after such differences are accounted for, race and ethnicity remain significant predictors of the quality of health care received. In Unequal Treatment, a panel of experts documents this evidence and explores how persons of color experience the health care environment. The book examines how disparities in treatment may arise in health care systems and looks at aspects of the clinical encounter that may contribute to such disparities. Patients' and providers' attitudes, expectations, and behavior are analyzed. How to intervene? Unequal Treatment offers recommendations for improvements in medical care financing, allocation of care, availability of language translation, community-based care, and other arenas. The committee highlights the potential of cross-cultural education to improve provider-patient communication and offers a detailed look at how to integrate cross-cultural learning within the health professions. The book concludes with recommendations for data collection and research initiatives. Unequal Treatment will be vitally important to health care policymakers, administrators, providers, educators, and students as well as advocates for people of color.

Communities in Action

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Publisher : National Academies Press
ISBN 13 : 0309452961
Total Pages : 583 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 (94 download)

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Book Synopsis Communities in Action by : National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine

Download or read book Communities in Action written by National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine and published by National Academies Press. This book was released on 2017-04-27 with total page 583 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the United States, some populations suffer from far greater disparities in health than others. Those disparities are caused not only by fundamental differences in health status across segments of the population, but also because of inequities in factors that impact health status, so-called determinants of health. Only part of an individual's health status depends on his or her behavior and choice; community-wide problems like poverty, unemployment, poor education, inadequate housing, poor public transportation, interpersonal violence, and decaying neighborhoods also contribute to health inequities, as well as the historic and ongoing interplay of structures, policies, and norms that shape lives. When these factors are not optimal in a community, it does not mean they are intractable: such inequities can be mitigated by social policies that can shape health in powerful ways. Communities in Action: Pathways to Health Equity seeks to delineate the causes of and the solutions to health inequities in the United States. This report focuses on what communities can do to promote health equity, what actions are needed by the many and varied stakeholders that are part of communities or support them, as well as the root causes and structural barriers that need to be overcome.

Race, Ethnicity, and Language Data

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Publisher : National Academies Press
ISBN 13 : 0309140129
Total Pages : 286 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 (91 download)

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Book Synopsis Race, Ethnicity, and Language Data by : Institute of Medicine

Download or read book Race, Ethnicity, and Language Data written by Institute of Medicine and published by National Academies Press. This book was released on 2009-12-30 with total page 286 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The goal of eliminating disparities in health care in the United States remains elusive. Even as quality improves on specific measures, disparities often persist. Addressing these disparities must begin with the fundamental step of bringing the nature of the disparities and the groups at risk for those disparities to light by collecting health care quality information stratified by race, ethnicity and language data. Then attention can be focused on where interventions might be best applied, and on planning and evaluating those efforts to inform the development of policy and the application of resources. A lack of standardization of categories for race, ethnicity, and language data has been suggested as one obstacle to achieving more widespread collection and utilization of these data. Race, Ethnicity, and Language Data identifies current models for collecting and coding race, ethnicity, and language data; reviews challenges involved in obtaining these data, and makes recommendations for a nationally standardized approach for use in health care quality improvement.

Crossing the Quality Chasm

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Publisher : National Academies Press
ISBN 13 : 0309072808
Total Pages : 360 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 (9 download)

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Book Synopsis Crossing the Quality Chasm by : Institute of Medicine

Download or read book Crossing the Quality Chasm written by Institute of Medicine and published by National Academies Press. This book was released on 2001-08-19 with total page 360 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Second in a series of publications from the Institute of Medicine's Quality of Health Care in America project Today's health care providers have more research findings and more technology available to them than ever before. Yet recent reports have raised serious doubts about the quality of health care in America. Crossing the Quality Chasm makes an urgent call for fundamental change to close the quality gap. This book recommends a sweeping redesign of the American health care system and provides overarching principles for specific direction for policymakers, health care leaders, clinicians, regulators, purchasers, and others. In this comprehensive volume the committee offers: A set of performance expectations for the 21st century health care system. A set of 10 new rules to guide patient-clinician relationships. A suggested organizing framework to better align the incentives inherent in payment and accountability with improvements in quality. Key steps to promote evidence-based practice and strengthen clinical information systems. Analyzing health care organizations as complex systems, Crossing the Quality Chasm also documents the causes of the quality gap, identifies current practices that impede quality care, and explores how systems approaches can be used to implement change.

Making Health Care Safer

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Author :
Publisher : Department of Health and Human Services
ISBN 13 :
Total Pages : 744 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 (91 download)

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Book Synopsis Making Health Care Safer by :

Download or read book Making Health Care Safer written by and published by Department of Health and Human Services. This book was released on 2001 with total page 744 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "This project aimed to collect and critically review the existing evidence on practices relevant to improving patient safety"--P. v.

A Nationwide Framework for Surveillance of Cardiovascular and Chronic Lung Diseases

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Author :
Publisher : National Academies Press
ISBN 13 : 0309212197
Total Pages : 200 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 (92 download)

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Book Synopsis A Nationwide Framework for Surveillance of Cardiovascular and Chronic Lung Diseases by : Institute of Medicine

Download or read book A Nationwide Framework for Surveillance of Cardiovascular and Chronic Lung Diseases written by Institute of Medicine and published by National Academies Press. This book was released on 2011-08-26 with total page 200 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Chronic diseases are common and costly, yet they are also among the most preventable health problems. Comprehensive and accurate disease surveillance systems are needed to implement successful efforts which will reduce the burden of chronic diseases on the U.S. population. A number of sources of surveillance data--including population surveys, cohort studies, disease registries, administrative health data, and vital statistics--contribute critical information about chronic disease. But no central surveillance system provides the information needed to analyze how chronic disease impacts the U.S. population, to identify public health priorities, or to track the progress of preventive efforts. A Nationwide Framework for Surveillance of Cardiovascular and Chronic Lung Diseases outlines a conceptual framework for building a national chronic disease surveillance system focused primarily on cardiovascular and chronic lung diseases. This system should be capable of providing data on disparities in incidence and prevalence of the diseases by race, ethnicity, socioeconomic status, and geographic region, along with data on disease risk factors, clinical care delivery, and functional health outcomes. This coordinated surveillance system is needed to integrate and expand existing information across the multiple levels of decision making in order to generate actionable, timely knowledge for a range of stakeholders at the local, state or regional, and national levels. The recommendations presented in A Nationwide Framework for Surveillance of Cardiovascular and Chronic Lung Diseases focus on data collection, resource allocation, monitoring activities, and implementation. The report also recommends that systems evolve along with new knowledge about emerging risk factors, advancing technologies, and new understanding of the basis for disease. This report will inform decision-making among federal health agencies, especially the Department of Health and Human Services; public health and clinical practitioners; non-governmental organizations; and policy makers, among others.

Making Healthcare Safe

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Author :
Publisher : Springer Nature
ISBN 13 : 3030711234
Total Pages : 450 pages
Book Rating : 4.0/5 (37 download)

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Book Synopsis Making Healthcare Safe by : Lucian L. Leape

Download or read book Making Healthcare Safe written by Lucian L. Leape and published by Springer Nature. This book was released on 2021-05-28 with total page 450 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This unique and engaging open access title provides a compelling and ground-breaking account of the patient safety movement in the United States, told from the perspective of one of its most prominent leaders, and arguably the movement’s founder, Lucian L. Leape, MD. Covering the growth of the field from the late 1980s to 2015, Dr. Leape details the developments, actors, organizations, research, and policy-making activities that marked the evolution and major advances of patient safety in this time span. In addition, and perhaps most importantly, this book not only comprehensively details how and why human and systems errors too often occur in the process of providing health care, it also promotes an in-depth understanding of the principles and practices of patient safety, including how they were influenced by today’s modern safety sciences and systems theory and design. Indeed, the book emphasizes how the growing awareness of systems-design thinking and the self-education and commitment to improving patient safety, by not only Dr. Leape but a wide range of other clinicians and health executives from both the private and public sectors, all converged to drive forward the patient safety movement in the US. Making Healthcare Safe is divided into four parts: I. In the Beginning describes the research and theory that defined patient safety and the early initiatives to enhance it. II. Institutional Responses tells the stories of the efforts of the major organizations that began to apply the new concepts and make patient safety a reality. Most of these stories have not been previously told, so this account becomes their histories as well. III. Getting to Work provides in-depth analyses of four key issues that cut across disciplinary lines impacting patient safety which required special attention. IV. Creating a Culture of Safety looks to the future, marshalling the best thinking about what it will take to achieve the safe care we all deserve. Captivatingly written with an “insider’s” tone and a major contribution to the clinical literature, this title will be of immense value to health care professionals, to students in a range of academic disciplines, to medical trainees, to health administrators, to policymakers and even to lay readers with an interest in patient safety and in the critical quest to create safe care.

To Err Is Human

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Publisher : National Academies Press
ISBN 13 : 0309068371
Total Pages : 312 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 (9 download)

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Book Synopsis To Err Is Human by : Institute of Medicine

Download or read book To Err Is Human written by Institute of Medicine and published by National Academies Press. This book was released on 2000-03-01 with total page 312 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Experts estimate that as many as 98,000 people die in any given year from medical errors that occur in hospitals. That's more than die from motor vehicle accidents, breast cancer, or AIDSâ€"three causes that receive far more public attention. Indeed, more people die annually from medication errors than from workplace injuries. Add the financial cost to the human tragedy, and medical error easily rises to the top ranks of urgent, widespread public problems. To Err Is Human breaks the silence that has surrounded medical errors and their consequenceâ€"but not by pointing fingers at caring health care professionals who make honest mistakes. After all, to err is human. Instead, this book sets forth a national agendaâ€"with state and local implicationsâ€"for reducing medical errors and improving patient safety through the design of a safer health system. This volume reveals the often startling statistics of medical error and the disparity between the incidence of error and public perception of it, given many patients' expectations that the medical profession always performs perfectly. A careful examination is made of how the surrounding forces of legislation, regulation, and market activity influence the quality of care provided by health care organizations and then looks at their handling of medical mistakes. Using a detailed case study, the book reviews the current understanding of why these mistakes happen. A key theme is that legitimate liability concerns discourage reporting of errorsâ€"which begs the question, "How can we learn from our mistakes?" Balancing regulatory versus market-based initiatives and public versus private efforts, the Institute of Medicine presents wide-ranging recommendations for improving patient safety, in the areas of leadership, improved data collection and analysis, and development of effective systems at the level of direct patient care. To Err Is Human asserts that the problem is not bad people in health careâ€"it is that good people are working in bad systems that need to be made safer. Comprehensive and straightforward, this book offers a clear prescription for raising the level of patient safety in American health care. It also explains how patients themselves can influence the quality of care that they receive once they check into the hospital. This book will be vitally important to federal, state, and local health policy makers and regulators, health professional licensing officials, hospital administrators, medical educators and students, health caregivers, health journalists, patient advocatesâ€"as well as patients themselves. First in a series of publications from the Quality of Health Care in America, a project initiated by the Institute of Medicine

How Far Have We Come in Reducing Health Disparities?

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Author :
Publisher : National Academies Press
ISBN 13 : 0309255333
Total Pages : 118 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 (92 download)

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Book Synopsis How Far Have We Come in Reducing Health Disparities? by : Institute of Medicine

Download or read book How Far Have We Come in Reducing Health Disparities? written by Institute of Medicine and published by National Academies Press. This book was released on 2012-09-12 with total page 118 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: At the turn of the 21st century, several important reports and events designed to raise awareness of health disparities and to describe initial efforts to reduce health disparities took place. The Surgeon General's office released several reports that showed dramatic disparities in tobacco use and access to mental health services by race and ethnicity. The first real legislation focused on reducing health disparities was signed into law, creating the National Center for Minority Health and Health Disparities within the NIH. In 2001, the IOM released its landmark report, Crossing the Quality Chasm: A New Health System for the 21st Century, highlighting the importance of a focus on health care quality rather than a focus on only access and cost issues. Building upon these reports and events, the IOM held a workshop on April 8, 2010, that discussed progress to address health disparities and focused on the success of various federal initiatives to reduce health disparities. How Far Have We Come in Reducing Health Disparities? summarizes the workshop and explains the progress in the field since 2000.

Access to Health Care in America

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Publisher : National Academies Press
ISBN 13 : 0309047420
Total Pages : 240 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 (9 download)

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Book Synopsis Access to Health Care in America by : Institute of Medicine

Download or read book Access to Health Care in America written by Institute of Medicine and published by National Academies Press. This book was released on 1993-02-01 with total page 240 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Americans are accustomed to anecdotal evidence of the health care crisis. Yet, personal or local stories do not provide a comprehensive nationwide picture of our access to health care. Now, this book offers the long-awaited health equivalent of national economic indicators. This useful volume defines a set of national objectives and identifies indicatorsâ€"measures of utilization and outcomeâ€"that can "sense" when and where problems occur in accessing specific health care services. Using the indicators, the committee presents significant conclusions about the situation today, examining the relationships between access to care and factors such as income, race, ethnic origin, and location. The committee offers recommendations to federal, state, and local agencies for improving data collection and monitoring. This highly readable and well-organized volume will be essential for policymakers, public health officials, insurance companies, hospitals, physicians and nurses, and interested individuals.

Finding What Works in Health Care

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Publisher : National Academies Press
ISBN 13 : 0309164257
Total Pages : 267 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 (91 download)

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Book Synopsis Finding What Works in Health Care by : Institute of Medicine

Download or read book Finding What Works in Health Care written by Institute of Medicine and published by National Academies Press. This book was released on 2011-07-20 with total page 267 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Healthcare decision makers in search of reliable information that compares health interventions increasingly turn to systematic reviews for the best summary of the evidence. Systematic reviews identify, select, assess, and synthesize the findings of similar but separate studies, and can help clarify what is known and not known about the potential benefits and harms of drugs, devices, and other healthcare services. Systematic reviews can be helpful for clinicians who want to integrate research findings into their daily practices, for patients to make well-informed choices about their own care, for professional medical societies and other organizations that develop clinical practice guidelines. Too often systematic reviews are of uncertain or poor quality. There are no universally accepted standards for developing systematic reviews leading to variability in how conflicts of interest and biases are handled, how evidence is appraised, and the overall scientific rigor of the process. In Finding What Works in Health Care the Institute of Medicine (IOM) recommends 21 standards for developing high-quality systematic reviews of comparative effectiveness research. The standards address the entire systematic review process from the initial steps of formulating the topic and building the review team to producing a detailed final report that synthesizes what the evidence shows and where knowledge gaps remain. Finding What Works in Health Care also proposes a framework for improving the quality of the science underpinning systematic reviews. This book will serve as a vital resource for both sponsors and producers of systematic reviews of comparative effectiveness research.

Primary Care and Public Health

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Publisher : National Academies Press
ISBN 13 : 0309255201
Total Pages : 212 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 (92 download)

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Book Synopsis Primary Care and Public Health by : Institute of Medicine

Download or read book Primary Care and Public Health written by Institute of Medicine and published by National Academies Press. This book was released on 2012-07-19 with total page 212 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Ensuring that members of society are healthy and reaching their full potential requires the prevention of disease and injury; the promotion of health and well-being; the assurance of conditions in which people can be healthy; and the provision of timely, effective, and coordinated health care. Achieving substantial and lasting improvements in population health will require a concerted effort from all these entities, aligned with a common goal. The Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA) and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) requested that the Institute of Medicine (IOM) examine the integration of primary care and public health. Primary Care and Public Health identifies the best examples of effective public health and primary care integration and the factors that promote and sustain these efforts, examines ways by which HRSA and CDC can use provisions of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act to promote the integration of primary care and public health, and discusses how HRSA-supported primary care systems and state and local public health departments can effectively integrate and coordinate to improve efforts directed at disease prevention. This report is essential for all health care centers and providers, state and local policy makers, educators, government agencies, and the public for learning how to integrate and improve population health.

Measures of Health Literacy

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Author :
Publisher : National Academies Press
ISBN 13 : 0309139805
Total Pages : 142 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 (91 download)

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Book Synopsis Measures of Health Literacy by : Institute of Medicine

Download or read book Measures of Health Literacy written by Institute of Medicine and published by National Academies Press. This book was released on 2009-12-30 with total page 142 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Health literacy-the ability for individuals to obtain, process, and understand basic health information and services to facilitate appropriate health decisions-is increasingly recognized as an important facet of health care and health outcomes. Although research on health literacy has grown tremendously in the past decade, there is no widely agreed-upon framework for health literacy as a determinant of health outcomes. Most instruments focus on assessing an individual's health literacy, yet the scope of health literacy reaches far beyond an individual's skills and abilities. Health literacy occurs in the context of the health care system, and therefore measures of health literacy must also assess the demands and complexities of the health care systems with which patients interact. For example, measures are needed to determine how well the system has been organized so that it can be navigated by individuals with different levels of health literacy and how well health organizations are doing at making health information understandable and actionable. To examine what is known about measures of health literacy, the Institute of Medicine convened a workshop. The workshop, summarized in this volume, reviews the current status of measures of health literacy, including those used in the health care setting; discusses possible surrogate measures that might be used to assess health literacy; and explores ways in which health literacy measures can be used to assess patient-centered approaches to care.

National Healthcare Disparities Report, 2006

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Author :
Publisher : CreateSpace
ISBN 13 : 9781499310047
Total Pages : 210 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 (1 download)

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Book Synopsis National Healthcare Disparities Report, 2006 by : U. S. Department Human Services

Download or read book National Healthcare Disparities Report, 2006 written by U. S. Department Human Services and published by CreateSpace. This book was released on 2014-04-30 with total page 210 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) is pleased to release the 2006 National Healthcare Disparities Report (NHDR) on behalf of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) and in collaboration with an HHS-wide Interagency Work Group. Like previous reports, the 2006 NHDR also received significant guidance from AHRQ leadership and AHRQ's National Advisory Committee. This fourth annual report to Congress provides a comprehensive national overview of disparities in health care among racial, ethnic, and socioeconomic groups in the general U.S. population and within priority populations and tracks the progress of activities to reduce disparities. The NHDR tracks disparities related to quality of health care and access to health care. Measures of health care quality address the extent to which providers and hospitals deliver evidence-based care for specific services as well as the outcomes of the care provided. They are organized around four dimensions of quality- effectiveness, patient safety, timeliness, and patient centeredness-and cover four stages of care-staying healthy, getting better, living with illness or disability, and coping with the end of life. Measures of health care access include assessments of how easily patients are able to get needed health care and their actual use of services. They are organized around two dimensions of access-facilitators and barriers to care and health care utilization. The NHDR is complemented by its companion report, the National Healthcare Quality Report (NHQR), which uses the same quality measures as the NHDR to provide a comprehensive overview of the quality of health care in America. Both reports measure health care quality and track changes over time but with different orientations. The NHQR addresses the current state of health care quality and the opportunities for improvement for all Americans as a whole. This perspective is useful for identifying where we are doing well as a Nation and where more work is needed. The NHDR addresses the distribution of improvements in health care quality and access across the different populations that make up America. This perspective is useful for ensuring that all Americans benefit from improvements in care. Perspectives from both reports are needed for a complete understanding of quality of health care, and both reports support HHS Secretary Mike Leavitt's 500- Day Plan to fulfill the President's vision of a healthier America, specifically in the areas of better transparency of health care quality information and eliminating inequities in health care. This year's NHDR and NHQR continue the tracking of trends across a broad array of measures of health care quality and access for many racial and ethnic minority groups and socioeconomic groups. In addition, the 2006 reports incorporate improved measures and methods for summarizing quality and disparities in health care, including new composite measures and expanded analyses of trends in disparities. This section offers a concise overview of findings from the 2006 NHDR. More detailed findings are presented in the chapters that follow. In the 2006 NHDR, four key themes are highlighted for policymakers, researchers, clinicians, administrators, and community leaders who seek information to improve health care services for all Americans: Disparities remain prevalent; Some disparities are diminishing while others are increasing; Opportunities for reducing disparities remain; Information about disparities is improving, but gaps still exist.