24.12.2014 Views

National Healthcare Disparities Report - LDI Health Economist

National Healthcare Disparities Report - LDI Health Economist

National Healthcare Disparities Report - LDI Health Economist

SHOW MORE
SHOW LESS

You also want an ePaper? Increase the reach of your titles

YUMPU automatically turns print PDFs into web optimized ePapers that Google loves.

Highlights<br />

Quality Is Improving; Access and <strong>Disparities</strong> Are Not Improving<br />

Suboptimal health care is undesirable, but we may be less concerned if we observe evidence of vigorous<br />

improvement. Hence, the second key function of the reports is to examine change over time. To track the<br />

progress of health care quality and access in this country, the reports present annual rates of change, which<br />

represent how quickly quality of and access to services delivered by the health care system are improving or<br />

declining. Another way to describe rate of change is the speed of improvement or decline in health care<br />

quality and access.<br />

As in past reports, regression analysis is used to estimate annual rate of change for each measure. Annual rate<br />

of change is calculated only for measures with at least 4 years of data. For most measures, trends include data<br />

points from 2002-2003 to 2007-2008. New this year, we use weighted least squares regression to assess<br />

whether trends are statistically significant. Rates that are going in a favorable direction at a rate exceeding 1%<br />

per year and statistically significant are considered to be improving. Rates going in an unfavorable direction at<br />

a rate exceeding 1% per year and statistically significant are considered to be worsening. Rates that are<br />

changing less than 1% per year or that are not statistically significant are considered to be static. Because of<br />

the addition of significance testing, this year’s results cannot be compared with results in previous reports.<br />

Figure H.3. Number and proportion of all quality measures that are improving, not changing, or<br />

worsening, overall and for select populations<br />

Improving<br />

No Change<br />

Worsening<br />

100<br />

80<br />

84 26<br />

79<br />

61<br />

39 78<br />

41<br />

60<br />

Percent<br />

40<br />

20<br />

0<br />

Total (n=151)<br />

57 22 56<br />

10 3 12 4 5 8<br />

65+ (n=51)<br />

Black (n=147)<br />

52<br />

Asian (n=117)<br />

AI/AN (n=68)<br />

24 54<br />

Hispanic (n=140)<br />

34<br />

6<br />

Poor (n=81)<br />

Key: AI/AN = American Indian or Alaska Native; n = number<br />

of measures.<br />

Improving = Quality is going in a positive direction at an<br />

average annual rate greater than 1% per year.<br />

No Change = Quality is not changing or is changing at an<br />

average annual rate less than 1% per year.<br />

Worsening = Quality is going in a negative direction at an<br />

average annual rate greater than 1% per year.<br />

<strong>National</strong> <strong><strong>Health</strong>care</strong> <strong>Disparities</strong> <strong>Report</strong>, 2011<br />

5

Hooray! Your file is uploaded and ready to be published.

Saved successfully!

Ooh no, something went wrong!