It is a well-known fact that the United States spends more on health care each year than any other nation — a stunning $2.4 trillion.  While much of this care has important benefits for health, Americans generally do not receive the highest quality care possible, often leading to significantly worse health and preventable costs.  According to the 2008 National Healthcare Quality Report from the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, “despite promising improvement in select areas, the health care system is not achieving the more substantial strides needed to close the gap.”  Simply put, achieving high-quality, affordable care is essential to sustainable health care reform.

Current health care reform efforts recognize that effective reform must support providers and patients to improve the way that health care is delivered — through a greater emphasis on prevention and care coordination, and by taking steps to enable patients to get the best care for their needs at the lowest cost.  In turn, this requires a broad range of policy reforms that focus on quality and value, including:

• Payment reforms, such as episode payments and accountable care organizations;
• Benefit reforms that enable patients to save more when they choose more efficient coverage and higher-value care;
• Regulatory reforms to remove barriers to improving care while also protecting patients;
• Efforts to promote the effective implementation of health information technology (IT); and
• Improvements in the use of evidence to inform decisions and to promote the rapid use of effective innovations in care.

Every one of these policy reforms depends on much better, nationally-consistent measures of quality and cost.

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