A New Era of Healthcare Accountability

In the past, the only way had to measure quality in healthcare was to file a complaint or a suit. But now we are entering an era where several different angles are being tried, and we have great hope that measuring quality of care will become a process that helps providers improve instead of punishing them.

From the Wall Street Journal Online/Harris Interactive Health-Care Poll, 2008-Mar-26:

Most adults today believe it is fair to measure healthcare quality based on the use of electronic medical records; two years ago fewer than half of all adults believed this was a fair measure of quality. Similarly, more adults today believe it's fair to assess quality based upon the use of medical tests that measure how well doctors are managing patients with chronic medical conditions, the frequency with which doctors provide preventive screening tests to their patients and assessments of physicians by medical boards and third party organizations....Katerine Binns, the President of the Healthcare Division at Harris Interactive, said "These findings suggest that as quality measurement in healthcare becomes more readily available to consumers and they become more familiar with these measures that trust in the process will increase. At the end of the day, however, it's feedback from their peers--other patients--that matters most to consumers."