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Brian Vastag

JAMA. 2001;286:1568.

	Since this article does not have an abstract, we have provided the first 150 words of the full text and any section headings.

Washington—Prodded by national calls for improved health care, the nation's health maintenance organizations (HMOs) improved in most areas of clinical care for the second straight year, says the fifth annual report on the topic from the nonprofit National Committee for Quality Assurance (NCQA). Cardiac care saw the best gains, while scores for sexually transmitted disease screening and follow-up care for mental illness remained low.

Despite widespread objective gains, reported customer satisfaction crept up a scant few percentage points. "The environment is a bit hostile to HMOs right now, and that could have offset the clinical gains," said a spokesperson for the NCQA.

After 3 years of ambiguous results, the project reported improved scores for clinical care in most areas last year, a trend that continued this year. Health plan competition to retain customers is partly responsible for the improvements, according to the NCQA.

The largest gains came . . . [Full Text of this Article]

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