Human Services News

From The Commonwealth Fund:

Prepared for the Commonwealth Fund Commission on a High Performance Health System, the National Scorecard on U.S. Health System Performance, 2008, updates the 2006 Scorecard, the first comprehensive means of measuring and monitoring health care outcomes, quality, access, efficiency, and equity in the United States.

The U.S. now ranks last out of 19 countries on a measure of mortality amenable to medical care, falling from 15th as other countries raised the bar on performance.

Despite some encouraging pockets of improvement, the country as a whole has failed to keep pace with levels of performance attained by leading nations, delivery systems, states, and regions.

Hospitalizations increased among nursing home residents from 2000 to 2004, as did rehospitalizations for patients discharged to skilled nursing facilities---signaling a need to improve long-term care and transitions between health care providers.

Based on areas within the U.S. that achieve superior outcomes at lower costs, it should be possible to close gaps in health care quality and access, and to reduce costs significantly.

Hospital readmission rates and rates of potentially preventable hospitalizations for ambulatory care-sensitive conditions remain high and variable across the country, as do total costs for the chronically ill.

The 2008 National Scorecard documents the human and economic costs of failing to address the problems in our health system.

Aiming higher and moving on a more positive path will require strategies targeting the multiple sources of poor health system performance.

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