PPACA Care Provisions: The National Quality Strategy

Having heard about the individual mandate and other insurance provisions of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act ad nauseum, I decided to use the Scribd document below as a basis for expanding on the care provisions of the law.

The PPACA mandates an annual report on the development and implementation of a national strategy to improve health care quality. The report is here and the executive summary is reproduced below.

Executive Summary  

The Affordable Care Act seeks to increase access to high-quality, affordable health care for all Americans. To that end, the law requires the Secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) to establish a National Strategy for Quality Improvement in Health Care (the National Quality Strategy) that sets priorities to guide this effort and includes a strategic plan for how to achieve it. This report describes the initial Strategy and plan for implementation.

The National Quality Strategy will promote quality health care in which the needs of patients, families, and communities guide the actions of all those who deliver and pay for care. It will incorporate the evidence-based results of the latest research and scientific advances in clinical medicine, public health, and health care delivery. It will foster a delivery system that works better for clinicians and provider organizations—reducing their administrative burdens and helping them collaborate to improve care. It is guided by principles (available atwww.ahrq.gov/workingforquality) that were developed with input by stakeholders across the health care system, including Federal and State agencies, local communities, provider organizations, clinicians, patients, businesses, employers, and payers. Most importantly, the implementation of this Strategy will lead to a measurable improvement in outcomes of care, and in the overall health of the American people.

An update for 2012 is available here on the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality website. Within the update, here is the FDA's section of the plan as an example of one of the eight agencies. There is a ninth section for agency leadership.

Priorities

Making care safer by reducing the harm caused in the delivery of care.

Safe Use Initiative. The Safe Use Initiative is an FDA Center for Drug Evaluation and Research nonregulatory program through which collaborative cross-health sector projects are created to better manage specific preventable drug risks and reduce preventable harm from FDA-regulated drugs. Adverse events from drug use are estimated to result in more than 4 million visits to emergency departments, doctors' offices, or other outpatient settings annually. Innovation and improvement of risk management approaches through collaborations between federal agencies and the broader health care community can reduce preventable drug harm through increased communication, engagement, and action across all sectors of public health and health care. The metrics will be based on the specific project's objectives and outcomes. FDA and interested collaborators will develop appropriate evaluation metrics to measure an approach's success.

The overall national goal is an improvement in way things turn out for someone who is receiving health care. This is commonly referred to as the outcome, and will be a topic of later posts. One of my earlier posts, Payments for Services, Payments for Outcomes has already touched on this topic.

Health Care Shalls in the Affordable Care Act