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What Physicians Do? How Patients Fare? Or Both?

Ashish K. Jha, MD, MPH

JAMA. 2006;296:95-97.

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

Just 2 decades ago, most US citizens presumed they received high-quality care, and neither patients nor physicians were much concerned with quality measurement. The landscape has changed. Lapses in quality of care provided by the US health care system—the most expensive health care system in the world—are now widely recognized.^1-2 The Institute of Medicine's report of 2001 proclaimed a chasm between how the US health care system currently performs and its ideal¹; since then, more recent data show persistent deficiencies in care.² There is little doubt of the ample opportunities to improve the health care Americans receive.

With ongoing concerns about deficiencies in care, the need for valid and broadscale measures of quality is clear. However, despite much work, there is no consensus on which aspects of quality to measure: should the focus be "processes" of care, such as whether physicians or hospitals consistently . . . [Full Text of this Article]

Author Affiliations: Department of Health Policy and Management, Harvard School of Public Health, VA Boston Healthcare System and the Division of General Medicine, Brigham and Women's Hospital, Boston, Mass.

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