Self-Rated Health Among Patients with Coronary Artery Disease Enrolled in a Cardiovascular Risk Reduction Service.

Little is known about the use of the single self-rated health (SRH) status item measuring health-related quality of life among people with coronary artery disease (CAD). The objective of this study was to assess relationships between SRH and recurrent coronary events, mortality, health care utilization, and intermediate clinical outcomes and to assess predictors of fair/poor SRH. A total of 5573 patients enrolled in a comprehensive cardiac risk reduction service managed by clinical pharmacy specialists were evaluated over a 2-year period.

Self-reported health and functional status information improves prediction of inpatient admissions and costs.

Objectives: To determine whether adding selfreported health and functional status data to a diagnostic risk-score model explains additional variance in predicting inpatient admissions and costs.

Study Design: Retrospective observational analysis.

Methods: We used data from a Health Status Questionnaire (HSQ), completed by 6407 Kaiser Permanente Northwest Medicare patients between December 2006 and October 2008.

Kaiser Permanente's performance improvement system, Part 1: From benchmarking to executing on strategic priorities.

Background: By 2004, senior leaders at Kaiser Permanente, the largest not-for-profit health plan in the United States, recognizing variations across service areas in quality, safety, service, and efficiency, began developing a performance improvement (PI) system to realizing best-in-class quality performance across all 35 medical centers. MEASURING SYSTEMWIDE PERFORMANCE: In 2005, a Web-based data dashboard, "Big Q," which tracks the performance of each medical center and service area against external benchmarks and internal goals, was created. PLANNING FOR PI AND BENCHMARKING PERFORMANCE: In 2006, Kaiser Permanente national and regional continued planning the PI system, and in 2007, quality, medical group, operations, and information technology leaders benchmarked five high-performing organizations to identify capabilities required to achieve consistent best-in-class organizational performance.

The dartmouth atlas applied to kaiser permanente: analysis of variation in care at the end of life.

The Dartmouth Atlas method for examination of variation in care at the end of life was replicated by Kaiser Permanente (KP). Variation within KP was analyzed and compared with corresponding Dartmouth Atlas Hospital Referral Regions. Although KP inpatient care use rates were 25% to 30% lower and hospice use rates were higher than in the surrounding communities, there was still two- to four-fold variation in inpatient care use across KP geographic areas.

Principles for assessing disease management outcomes.

Disease management (DM) is rapidly becoming an important force in the late 20th and early 21st century as a strategy for managing the chronic illness of large populations. Given the increasing visibility of DM programs, the clinical, economic and financial impact of this support are vital to DM program accountability and its acceptance as a solution to the twin challenges of achieving affordable, quality health care. Measuring and reporting outcomes in DM is difficult.