AHRQ Report

The Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) released its 2012 Healthcare Quality Report, which focuses on progress and opportunities for improving health care quality and reducing health care disparities; 10 quality measures were identified as improving the fastest over the last four years; 10 measures were also identified as the slowest changers. Among the fastest:

• Surgical metrics of receiving prophylactic antibiotics within 1 hour of incision and discontinuing them within 24 hours of surgery
• Cardiac metrics of percutaneous coronary intervention within 90 minutes of arrival and heart failure patients receiving ACE inhibitors and complete discharge instructions
• Pneumonia patients receiving pneumococcal and influenza screening or vaccination

Among the slowest:

• Maternal deaths per 100,000 live births
• Suicide deaths per 100,000 population
• Postoperative pulmonary embolism or deep vein thrombosis per 1,000 adult surgical admissions