Frequency:Biennially
Measure Type:Utilization, Cost
Utah’s Health Data Committee (HDC) collects a biennial report on health care. For the 2005-2006 review they’ve added a new section, “Challenges of Health Care in Utah- Quality, Access, and Cost”. This report contains several measuring types to evaluate facilities on: preventive care, acute, chronic, hospital, nursing home, and home health care. Preventive care includes immunization, health screenings, and well-care visits. Negative findings display the quality of nursing homes to be not as strong as hospitals or home health care.
The HDC also performs analyses on a patient’s safety, comparing their results to the nation. The Healthcare Research and Quality developed ‘patient safety indicators’ based on the hospital inpatient discharge data. Data on insurance plans are also available to the public. A table is created illustrating ‘Percentage of Emergency Department Visits for Primary Care Sensitive Conditions”.
The second part of this report looks at the profile for different programs as well as performance reports. To measure health plan performances, 68 quality measures from the health plan employer data and information set (HEDIS) were utilized. Some of the measures included childhood immunization, cancer screenings, and prenatal care. The HDC used the consumer assessment of health plans survey (CAHPS), to monitor the quality of health care by using mail and phone questionnaires. They measure satisfaction, testing customer service, receiving care quickly, helpfulness of the doctor’s office staff, etc.
