A just discovered report by the Ins...

A just discovered report by the Institute of Medicine of the National Academies, "Priority Areas for National Action: Transforming Health Care Quality," lists 20 priority areas for control agencies and private organizations to focus onward to help produce major improvements in health care quality and delivery for all Americans. The areas, which range from broad interventions to preventive services to palliative care for the dying, were pickeded based on the following three selection criteria: (1) the breadth of impact in succession patients, families, and communities; (2) improvability, or the likelihood of closing large quality gaps; and (3) inclusiveness, which deals with the diversity of the public affected. The committee did not rank the priority areas, which are: asthma; care coordination; children with special health care needs; diabetes; close of life with advanced organ theory failure; evidence-based cancer screening; frailty associated with antique age; hypertension; immunization; ischemic heart disease; major depression; medication management; nosocomial infections; obesity; pain command in advanced cancer; pregnancy and childbirth; self-management/health literacy; accurate and persistent mental illness; stroke; and tobacco-dependence treatment in adults. The research was sponsored by the U Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) Copies of the report may be obtained online at books.nap.edu/catalog/10593.html.

COPYRIGHT 2003 American Academy of Family Physicians

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