AHRQ Publishes Annual Report on Strengths, Weaknesses of States' Health Care Quality

Want to know how your state fares in 100 quality measures? Check out state-by-state results from the second annual National Healthcare Quality Report. The report, produced by the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, includes a table of states, with links to quality rankings, performance summaries and narrative "snapshots" of health quality performance for each state.

The link to each state's ranking shows compliance for 14 selected measures of health care quality featured in the 2004 report. These data show areas in which states are doing well and where they may need improvement.

A second link describes each state's performance on the entire set of about 100 quality measures. Those measures pertain to diagnosis and management of various health conditions, including cancer, respiratory diseases, heart disease, HIV/AIDS, mental health disorders, end-stage renal disease, diabetes and pregnancy. Other measures gauge states' performance in such areas as effectiveness of home health and nursing home care, timeliness of providing needed services, whether care was patient-centered and overall care.

A third link provides details on each state's performance and identifies two areas in which the state excels and two in which the state needs improvement.

Visitors to the AHRQ site also may view the full National Healthcare Quality Report.