The quality epidemic.

Quality improvement in home health has evolved over past decades, moving from quality assurance to formal quality improvement projects utilizing Outcome-Based Quality Improvement (OBQI) or other structured approaches. Beginning in 2002, quality improvement was thrust into the limelight with the public reporting of nursing home, home health, and hospital quality measures on Medicare's consumer compare Web sites at www.Medicare.gov. With public reporting, quality became visible, measurable, and seemingly tangible. The number of resources related to quality improvement skyrocketed. The advances in quality improvement continued to accelerate as quality spread from individual provider initiatives or local collaboratives to full-blown national quality campaigns.