2016 National Healthcare Quality and Disparities Report

AHRQ's 2016 National Healthcare Quality and Disparities Report shows that the quality of health care continues to improve gradually each year, but gains remain uneven among minorities.

Some of the biggest improvements are in measures of "person-centered care," such as communication between doctors and their patients, and the safety of medical care, such as fewer complications among hospital patients who were taking anticoagulants other than warfarin. The report also indicates that fewer people were uninsured, as 11 percent of people under age 65 were uninsured in 2016 compared with 18 percent in 2010. However, most disparities in health care quality continued to persist, with no significant improvements for any racial or ethnic groups, especially people in poor, low-income, and uninsured households, as well as blacks and Hispanics.

AHRQ's Chartbook on Patient Safety, a companion to the National Healthcare Quality and Disparities Report, provides new data on dozens of safety measures, such as the rate of central line-associated bloodstream infections decreasing by more than 40 percent between 2009 and 2014.

Select to access an AHRQ Views blog on AHRQ's new report and chartbook.

Page last reviewed August 2017
Page originally created August 2017

Internet Citation: 2016 National Healthcare Quality and Disparities Report. Content last reviewed August 2017. Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, Rockville, MD. http://www.ahrq.gov/news/2016-nhqrdr-available.html