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AHRQ releases report on states' healthcare quality

Quality Improvement Monitor, March 28, 2008

The Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) has released its 2007 State Snapshots Web tool that tracks states' progress toward reaching government-set health goals for 2010.

"This year's State Snapshots do more than illustrate the wide variations in healthcare quality among states," AHRQ Director Carolyn M. Clancy, MD, said in a press release. "They also show a handful of the important challenges that states face as they work to improve the quality of care."

As in previous years, the 51 State Snapshots -- covering every state plus Washington, D.C. -- summarize healthcare quality in three dimensions: type of care (such as preventive, acute, or chronic care), setting of care (such as nursing homes or hospitals), and by clinical areas (such as care for patients with cancer or diabetes). The evaluations are expressed in simple, five-color "performance meter" illustrations that rate performance from "very weak" to "very strong." Users may explore whether a state has improved or worsened compared to other states in several areas of healthcare delivery.

Users can get more detailed portraits of each state's performance by exploring the State Snapshots' 149 separate measures of quality. Those measures range from preventing pressure sores to screening for diabetes-related foot problems to giving recommended care to pneumonia patients.

For more information, click here.

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