ABSTRACT
Healthcare is undergoing a revolution in quality of care as healthcare policymakers and third-party payors create incentives to both improve healthcare and minimize its costs. e publication of Crossing the Quality Chasm by the Institute of Medicine in 2001 focused attention on decits in our healthcare system and proposed a complete reengineering of the delivery of healthcare in the United States (Institute of Medicine (U.S.) Committee on Quality of Health Care in America 2001). Medicare’s pay-forperformance program, “P4P,” was launched in 2005 and links healthcare quality to reimbursement of providers. Hospitals scoring in the top 10% nationally are rewarded with an additional 2% payment on top of standard DRG charges (Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services 2009). With these changes comes the need to measure, assess, report, and improve the quality of care. e development of the required tools is in its infancy, but eorts are underway by numerous stakeholders to develop such an infrastructure.
