2006 National Health Care Quality and Disparities Reports released

Please take some time to browse the 2006 National Healthcare Quality Report and Disparities Report, released yesterday by the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality. It probably wouldn't be fair of me to comment much further on these, since I have worked on them in the past, but they're useful compilations of national-level data on a range of measures of quality and disparities, across various conditions and between priority populations. The data are collected and reported cross-sectionally, which is to say one year or several years at a time, and many are compared from year to year, to document progress. Outcome and process measures are selected with an eye to evidence that they represent quality of care.