AHRQ’s State Snapshots Measure Health Care Quality, Access State By State

The overall quality and safety of health care are improving. But which states are showing the most improvement in which areas of care? AHRQ’s annual State Snapshots provide easy-to-read charts on the strengths, weaknesses and opportunities for improvement in each state and the District of Columbia. The State Snapshots allow users to analyze data from their state in various ways, including types and settings of care, or by select clinical conditions, insurance status, access to care and priority populations. Data are drawn from the 2014 National Healthcare Quality and Disparities Report, which is compiled from more than 200 quality measures and represents the nation’s most complete source of data on the use and cost of health care and health insurance coverage. Trend data for most measures span from 2000–2002 to 2010–2012.

NHQR/NHDR Web Site

New to the Reports?

Data Spotlight

On July 31, AHRQ posted a chartbook that tracks progress on Priority 4 of the National Quality Strategy: Promoting the most effective prevention and treatment practices for the leading causes of mortality, starting with cardiovascular disease. About half of effective treatment measures improved and many, including several measures of pneumonia care publicly reported by the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, achieved such high levels of performance that continued reporting is unnecessary. As measures topped out, disparities between groups often became smaller. However, management of many chronic diseases remains a problem. For example, in 2011-2012, only 51.8% of adults with hypertension had their blood pressure under control, and among people with asthma, the percentage taking preventive medicine daily fell from 29.6% in 2003 to 22.5% in 2012. The chartbook provides information on individual measures that were summarized at a high level in the 2014 National Healthcare Quality and Disparities Report that was released on April 10.

NHQR/NHDR Web Site

News and Highlights

2014 National Healthcare Quality & Disparities Report

Access to health care improving for all racial and ethnic groups following Affordable Care Act, though additional work remains.

The 2014 National Healthcare Quality and Disparities Report from The Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality shows the progress and opportunities for improving health care quality and reducing health care disparities.

Among the highlights in this year's report:

Insurance rates improved substantially after individuals were able to obtain coverage through the Affordable Care Act's Health Insurance Marketplaces -- and the gains in access to care were greater among black and Hispanic adults than whites.
The overall rate of "uninsurance" - a measure of access to care - decreased substantially to 15.6 percent in the second quarter of 2014 for those age 18 to 64 (from a high of 22.3 percent in 2010).
For blacks, the uninsurance rate decreased from 24.6 percent in the last quarter of 2013 to 15.9 percent in the first half of 2014. During the same period, the uninsurance rate dropped from 40.3 percent to 33.2 percent for Hispanics, and the rate declined from 14.0 percent to 11.1 percent for whites.

This year's report has been consolidated and tracks performance measures that align with the National Quality Strategy. Chartbooks on specific topics -- such as access to care, patient safety and care coordination - will be issued in coming months to provide more detailed information and easy-to-understand slides that can be downloaded for presentations.

The report provides a snapshot of health care quality and disparities through trend analyses from 2000-2002 to 2011-2012 (except for select measures of access to care tracked through the first half of 2014, and for adverse events in hospitals tracked through 2013). Because most data precede implementation of a majority of the health insurance expansions included in the Affordable Care Act, the report serves as a baseline for measuring progress in future years.

2014 National Quality and Disparities Report
2014 National Quality and Disparities Report Chartbooks

National Quality Strategy

The National Strategy for Quality Improvement in Health Care (National Quality Strategy) establishes a framework for coordinating and focusing the significant efforts of diverse stakeholders to improve the quality of health and health care for all Americans. This report provides an update on progress within the context of this framework.
Working for Quality