Report Examines Progress in Quality for Medicare Beneficiaries, USA

Main Category: Medicare / Medicaid / SCHIP
Article Date: 10 May 2005 - 10:00 PDT

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"Quality of Health Care for Medicare Beneficiaries," Commonwealth Fund: The report, by Sheila Leatherman, a research professor at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill School of Public Health, and Douglas McCarthy, president of Colorado-based Issues Research, examines Medicare's performance and capacity to improve in a number of quality areas, including effectiveness of treatments, patient safety, access and timeliness. The report shows that Medicare has made progress in a number of areas, including many that have been targeted as national priorities, such as hospital treatment for heart attacks. However, the report also found that gaps in quality remain in many areas -- such as screening for colorectal cancer and depression treatment -- and that quality standards for these measures vary widely (Leatherman/McCarthy, "Quality of Health Care for Medicare Beneficiaries," May 2005).

A HealthCast of a briefing to discuss the research is available online at kaisernetwork.org.

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