Vital Signs: Core Metrics for Health and Health Care Progress. This item is unavailable.Vital Signs: Core Metrics for Health and Health Care Progress

Thousands of measures are in use today to assess health and health care in the United States. Although many of these measures provide useful information, their sheer number, as well as their lack of focus, consistency, and organization, limits their overall effectiveness in improving performance of the health system. To achieve better health at a lower cost, all stakeholders - including health professionals, payers, policy makers, and members of the public - must be alert to what matters most. What are the core measures that will yield the clearest understanding and focus on better health and well-being for Americans?

Vital Signs identifies the need for a standard set of core measures as a tool for improving health in the United States. This book explains the current use of metrics in health and health care and then proposes a streamlined set of 15 standardized measures, with recommendations for their application at every level and across sectors. This structured set of measures could provide consistent benchmarks for health progress across the nation and improve system performance in the highest-priority areas.

If health care is to become more effective and more efficient then sharper attention is required on the most important elements of health care. Important, focused, and reliable core metrics are critical to this effort. Vital Signs lays the groundwork for the adoption of core measures that if systematically applied could yield better health at a lower cost for all Americans.