Commentary: Measuring What Matters Most

We read with great interest Frank and Haw’s (2011) “best practice” guidelines for monitoring socioeconomic inequalities in health status because of its direct relevance to our work on the National Healthcare Disparities Report. The National Healthcare Disparities Report is an annual report mandated by Congress on “prevailing disparities in health care delivery as it relates to racial factors and socioeconomic factors” (AHRQ 2012). Our agency, the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ), leads the production of the report and its companion report, the National Healthcare Quality Report, which focuses on quality of care. Together, the reports track about 250 measures of health care quality and access to provide a snapshot of health care in the United States and to assess changes in health care quality and disparities over time.

Author(s): Carolyn M. Clancy and Ernest Moy

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Volume 91, Issue 1 (pages 201–204)
DOI: 10.1111/milq.12008
Published in 2013