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| The Vermont Health Care Quality Report 2008 |
Ch2: Measuring Quality of Care Ch3: Chronic Illness in Vermont
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What is quality of care and how do we
measure it? Measuring the quality of healthcare is complex. Even with clearly defined goals and criteria often times the crux of the problem is the availability of the right data. Special purpose data collection is time consuming and expensive and requires a well designed research study. Administrative data are easily attainable but not always suited for answering the research questions at hand. The Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) and the National Committee for Quality Assurance (NCQA) are both examples of organizations that have developed standardized measures to assess quality of care using administrative data sources. These measures are not flawless, but these types of measures afford researchers the ability to identify potential problems areas for more intensely designed research studies. This report makes use of administrative data sources with these standardized measures of quality to assess the quality of care in Vermont.
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