The results of the National Committee for Quality Assurance’s annual report on healthcare quality show some improvements but also marked problems.
Over long periods, most measures have improved tremendously, said Margaret O’Kane, NCQA president, during a briefing with reporters about NCQA’s annual State of Health Care Quality Report 2013, released Thursday. “The state of healthcare quality confirms that care is better in many ways than it was 10 years ago, or even five years ago,” she said.
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Currently, 43 percent of the U.S. population is covered in health plans that report quality results. “This means that we also know more about the quality of U.S. healthcare than ever before,” she added, which is even more critical with millions of individuals anticipated to shop for plans on health insurance exchanges.
The report analyzed data from the 2012 Healthcare Effectiveness Data and Information Set, or HEDIS, a widely used performance tool.
Among the more serious of problems found in the analysis is that the overuse of antibiotics continues to be resistant to change, leading to more health problems and higher healthcare costs. The overuse of antibiotics increases hospitalization and extensive treatment and adds avoidable cost in the healthcare system.
Also concerning, noted the report, is that while there are improvements in childhood immunization rates, the drop in rates that occurred a handful of years ago has not reversed. Additionally, rates for initiation of alcohol and drug treatment continue to decline.
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On the improvements side, the report found that progress in the basic measures crucial to fighting childhood obesity – calculating the body mass index of children at medical check-ups – has improved for the second consecutive year and that patients are having better experiences of care in Medicaid HMOs.
Much of the improvement in the Medicaid experience can be attributed to federal and state officials’ increased focus on quality and pay-for-performance, O’Kane noted.
“When practices get their processes to be more predictable and reliable, it takes stress off the provider, which patients can feel when a practice is organized,” O’Kane said.
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