In commentary on the National Committee for Quality Assurance’s 2006 report on the clinical performance of the nation’s health plans, the Commonwealth Fund finds evidence of “hope for overall improvement in the performance of the U.S. healthcare system.” The brief notes that commercial health plans are “approaching perfection” on the performance measure of giving beta-blocker treatment after heart attack and challenges plans to achieve similar results on other Health Plan Employer Data and Information Set measures. Also, significant quality improvement progress has been made with 30 states now requiring health maintenance organizations to be accredited through NCQA or to report HEDIS measures to NCQA or to the state. But the authors also note that there continues to be room for improvement. Some performance measures may be poorly designed, which may account for the persistent poor quality of mental health care, for example. The authors suggest that it would behoove the rest of the country to learn from the highest-performing plans and to find ways to assist those who fall beneath the benchmark.
