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January
14, 2003
Embargoed Until 4PM
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Contact:
Richard Deutsch
202-331-5790 Ext. 313 |
Improvement
in the Quality of Care for Medicare Beneficiaries
Statement by
AHQA
Executive Vice President David Schulke
The difference
between the care seniors should get and what they actually receive is a serious
quality gap. We are pleased to see the results reported today in JAMA by Dr. Jencks
and his colleagues at CMS. Their article shows significant progress in closing
the quality gap for seniors in just over two years.
The medical community—working
with Quality Improvement Organizations– reduced the gap from 1998-2001 by about
13%. More importantly, the study shows progress towards better quality of care
across a broad range of treatment areas. Twenty out of 22 Medicare clinical quality
performance indicators improved in the average state.
We know from previous
studies that improvement on these quality indicators is closely associated with
fewer deaths and more rapid recovery from serious illnesses, as well as more successful
management of chronic conditions.
Thousands of Americans
are alive today because doctors and hospitals have adopted more effective treatment
practices with the help of Medicare Quality Improvement Organizations. These improvements
also have a "spill-over" effect. Millions of other patients in hospitals,
doctors’ offices, and clinics also get better care because the same clinical systems
used to treat seniors are used to treat all patients.
Doctors, nurses,
pharmacists and other health care workers deserve the bulk of the credit for achieving
these results. They are the ones who do the work that results in improvement.
QIOs speed the pace of improvement by teaching techniques used by the best physicians
and institutions, so that each individual doctor and nurse doesn’t have to discover
these techniques for themselves.
The study also
shows that a significant quality gap remains. The nation’s hospitals, doctors
and QIOs have all committed themselves to work together voluntarily to close this
gap. Over the next three years, working under contract to Medicare, QIOs will
continue their work in hospitals and physician offices, and expand their efforts
into nursing homes and home health care. QIOs will also assist hospitals across
the country in publicly reporting the quality of their care, using many of the
same indicators reported in today’s JAMA.
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