Quality Products & Resources

This column provides healthcare quality professionals with announcements of new products, with company contact information, and of recently released media, with ordering and Internet access information. It also gives up-to-the-minute descriptions of resources of interest to healthcare quality professionals as they navigate the constant flood of information.

Products

Safety vacuum
Atrix International, Inc., has created the Atrix Safety Vacuum. The 600-watt, 6-pound vacuum is designed to extract and contain small particles such as dry chemical spills, mold spores, lead dust, toner, and soot. The vacuum has HEPA filtration for 99.97% efficiency at 0.3 micron and is self-contained to safely store the debris. A clear hose shows that the debris is safely contained within the filter.

There is an optional wall-mount kit for storage and easy accessibility in high-risk areas. Yellow labels are displayed for easy and quick identification. For more information, visit www.atrix.com.

Statistical software
Minitab, Inc., has released MINITAB Release 14 Statistical Software for Windows. This updated software has several new features and graphics.

Used for Six Sigma and other quality improvement projects, MINITAB Statistical Software offers statistical process control to design experiments. It features StatGuideTM and ReportPadTM to help communicate results.

In addition to more statistical power than the previous release, MINITAB 14 offers several new features such as

• a new graphics engine that delivers engaging results for tremendous insight into data
• an effortless method to create, edit, and update graphs
• the ability to customize menus and toolbars.

Structured cabling services
CareTech Solutions has announced that it is including structured cabling services as part of its professional services agreement for healthcare organizations.

The cabling services will improve hospitals' network and technical capabilities by connecting voice, data, and wireless equipment and including complete structure cabling system planning, coordination of planning and implementation, installation, and ongoing support. For more information, visit www.caretechsolutions.com.

Resources

Quality tools
QualityToolsTM is a clearinghouse for practical, ready-to-use tools for measuring and improving the quality of Americans' healthcare. QualityTools, which is sponsored by the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, offers resources to help physicians, hospitals, health systems, and other provider organizations.

QualityTools defines a "tool" as a Web site, database, report, fact sheet, guide, or other mechanism to assist healthcare professionals, policymakers, health plans, employers, patients, and consumers in the development, promotion, or enhancement of healthcare quality within a practice or organization or in an individual's daily life. The tools include guidelines, measures, benchmarking and comparative data, information on patient safety, and other tools that can be useful in assessing and improving the quality of care delivered to patients. The QualityTools Web site is updated weekly. A complete list of tool summaries is available through the QualityTools Web site. The listing is organized alphabetically by tool developer.

The National Healthcare Quality Report
The National Healthcare Quality Report, developed by the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, represents the first national comprehensive effort to measure the quality of healthcare in America. The report includes a broad set of performance measures that can serve as baseline views of the quality of healthcare. The report presents data on the quality of services for seven clinical conditions: cancer, diabetes, end-stage renal disease, heart disease, HIV and AIDS, mental health, and respiratory disease. It also includes data on maternal and child health, nursing home and home healthcare, and patient safety. The report is built on a 3-year effort to identify appropriate measures with extensive input and agreement from stakeholders. The goal of this first edition is to provide a baseline view of the quality of healthcare in America; future editions will help the nation make continuous improvements by tracking quality through a constantly evolving, science-based set of measures. These measures will be updated as new measures and data become available.

By specifying clearly which services should be provided to patients who have or are at risk for certain conditions and determining whether those services are being correctly provided at the right time, future editions will track the performance of the U.S. medical care system. Experts in a field can propose a measure of performance and then test, adopt, and implement it.

Data in this report come from many sources, including consumer surveys, reviews of medical records, administrative and claims data, and vital statistics. The various different data sources provide different perspectives and give a more complete picture of the quality of care for each specific condition.

The report is intended as a tool for federal and state policymakers, and therefore it tracks quality at the national and, wherever possible, the state level. The report is not intended as a prescription for how to fix the American healthcare system. Instead, it is intended as a tool for understanding the level of performance of the healthcare system across a broad spectrum of quality measures. By tracking a core set of measures over time, the report will begin to build consistent measures of success that will inform local improvement efforts.

This report is one important step on the road to national improvement in American healthcare delivery. High-quality healthcare is not yet a universal reality in America. This report identifies many areas in which there is a gap between what should be done and what patients and their providers continue to do. However, this report also identifies numerous areas in which healthcare is improving to the point at which practitioners are close to reaching and surpassing national performance goals.

The report presents the most comprehensive national picture to date that confirms this observation. Levels of quality of care, across the variety of measures tracked in the report, vary for different aspects of healthcare and across regions, states, and patient groups. Quality also varies by demographic categories including age, sex, race, and ethnicity. Rates remain low for provision of some basic and cost-effective preventive care, and disparities persist in quality of care for certain subgroups.

Despite this variation, quality of care has markedly improved and is now uniformly high in several notable areas. Best practices show how to provide cost-effective, high-quality care. In many of the efforts cited in this report as examples of best practices, the central role of data in quality improvement efforts is underscored. In many of the priority conditions and dimensions of quality presented in this report, a complete picture of national performance is not known. Ongoing work by private sector provider, payer, and research organization as well as by public sector entities, need to focus on filling in the gaps in the ability to measure quality in other areas.

This report is expected to become a unifying tool for measurement and improvement activities in healthcare quality nationally as it is updated and improved in future quality reports.

The report can be downloaded from http://www.qualitytools.ahrq.gov/qualityreport/download_report.aspx.

The National Healthcare Disparities Report
The National Healthcare Disparities Report, developed by the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), represents the first national comprehensive effort to measure differences in access and use of healthcare services by various populations. The report includes a broad set of performance measures that can serve as baseline views of differences in the use of services. The report presents data on the differences in the use of services, access to healthcare, and impressions of quality for seven clinical conditions: cancer, diabetes, end-stage renal disease, heart disease, HIV and AIDS, mental health, and respiratory disease, as well as data on maternal and child health, nursing home and home healthcare, and patient safety. It also examines differences in use of services by priority populations.

People of lower socioeconomic status and racial and ethnic minorities have in the past experienced poor health and challenges in accessing high-quality care. Recent studies have also raised questions regarding differences in clinical care provided to women, children, the elderly, and those with chronic illnesses. These differences are often grouped together under the broad heading "healthcare disparities."

Findings from the 2000 census indicated continued diversification of the U.S. population and growth in some groups considered to be at high risk for missing the benefits of healthcare. Gaps in income between the richest and poorest households in America are widening, and some racial and ethnic minorities are growing at a much more rapid pace than the majority white population. The demographic changes have different implications for communities across the nation and the systems of care available to their residents.

This report is the first in an annual series that provides a comprehensive view of the scope and characteristics of differences in healthcare quality and access associated with patient race, ethnicity, income, education, and place of residence. To date, no report has provided such extensive cross-group comparisons that could provide a national roadmap for informing local efforts on reducing disparities.

Closing the health gap for minorities and other priority populations is a major priority of the HHS. Addressing these differences in care is a cornerstone of the department's disease prevention programs. HHS is fulfilling this priority through a comprehensive effort to increase the percentage of the nation's children and adults who have access to healthcare services and to expand consumer choices.

Given the expanding healthcare infrastructure, not all Americans have equal access to the highest quality healthcare available in this country. People of lower socioeconomic status, rural populations, and some racial and ethnic minorities are disproportionately represented among those who say they have problems with access to care. Because the distribution of priority populations may vary substantially across communities, local data will be needed to evaluate the success of local initiatives and programs. Use of common metrics such as those used in this report for evaluation can enhance the capacity for learning from local successes. The Federal Government will continue its efforts to partner with state and local communities.

The National Healthcare Disparities Report and the National Healthcare Quality Report should serve to reinforce the important linkages between disparities and quality and facilitate the study of solutions that effectively address both issues. Future editions of this report will include analyses of the relationship between the multiple factors that may explain differences between and among these populations.

The report can be downloaded from: http://www.qualitytools.ahrq.gov/disparitiesreport/download_report.aspx.

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