The cost of health care can vary significantly for a number of reasons – such as variations in spending by region or provider, and also the severity of the condition or the patient's treatment preferences. All of these factors can make it difficult not only to measure the costs of health care services, but also to understand the relationship between spending and clinical quality and outcomes. A new issue brief provides information on a new effort to develop a "starter set" of cost-of-care measures, built on lessons from previous efforts to measure the costs of care. Read More  

Patient registries – databases of clinical information critical to evaluating care processes and outcomes – can play a critical role in measuring quality and cost of health care, yet they are often limited by shortcomings in design and function. A new white paper describes solutions for leveraging both administrative and registry data to make additional performance results available, as well as further increase registry use for performance measurement and other purposes. Read More

Major gaps exist between the health care that people should receive and the care they actually receive. The High-Value Health Care Project, an initiative of the QASC, is working to make sure consistent information becomes widely available to consumers, providers, and public and private payers of health care. Read More