Activity

Activity Description

The Institute of Medicine will form a consensus committee to review and synthesize current evidence to establish priority areas in healthcare quality and disparities for a combined update of the 2001 IOM report Envisioning the National Healthcare Quality Report (NHQR) and the 2002 IOM report Guidance for the National Healthcare Disparities Report (NHDR).  Previous recommendations regarding questions and objectives to be addressed relevant to quality of care and disparities will be evaluated and updated and new ones considered. The update's final findings and recommendations will address important questions evaluating quality and disparities in healthcare and will result in insight and guidance to the Agency for Healthcare Quality and Research (AHRQ) on ways of improving the NHQR and NHDR. The committee will take note of recommendations that are estimated to be a reach for the current resources of AHRQ.  

In addition, for inclusion in the report, a separate subcommittee of experts will report to the committee on the lack of standardization of collection of race and ethnicity data at the federal, state, local, and private sector levels due to the fact that the federal government has yet to issue comprehensive, definitive guidelines for the collection and disclosure   of race and ethnicity data in healthcare quality improvement.The subcommittee will focus on defining a standard set of race/ethnicity and language categories and methods  for obtaining this information to serve as a standard for those entities wishing to assess and report on quality of care across these categories.  The subcommittee will carry out an appropriate level of detailed, in-depth analysis and description which can be included in the overall report by the committee.