NCQA says quality of U.S. healthcare stagnant

After a decade of improvement, The National Committee for Quality Assurance has said that during last year the quality of healthcare was at a standstill in its annual State of Healthcare Quality Report. The study also  found that there no links between higher spending and better healthcare outcomes. The quality data that the report is based off of was submitted by 979 health plans across the country that collectively cover 116 million Americans, which is a 9 percent increase over 2008. The health plans use the HEDIS measures, which stands for Healthcare Effectiveness Data and Information Set.

Some of the trouble spots from this year’s report include the following statistics:

• Only 46.4% of people taking anti-depressant drugs are monitored by their physicians;
• 34.1% of children prescribed medications for attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) are seeing a doctor for follow-up care
• Half of patients previously hospitalized for mental illness see a physician for a follow-up visit
• 45.3% of people are receiving colon cancer screening at the appropriate age
• Only 42.6% of patients with alcohol or drug dependency are entering into treatment

There was also an increase in the overuse of medical imaging for back pain and breast cancer.

I think the most striking point to come out of the report is the NCQA’s estimation that if all health plans were able to perform at the level of the top 10 percent of plans, the U.S. would avoid up to 115,000 thousand deaths and save at least $12 billion in medical costs and lost productivity every year.

In light of this report, the NCQA asked Congress to include language about quality improvement in its final bill.

Does any of this surprise you? I was mostly shocked to hear that this was the first year that the report showed little change in quality improvement.