Chapter One
Overview
What Measures Measure

Imagine that hospital rankings have just been released in the local newspapers and made available on the Web. Members of the health care organization's board of trustees begin calling its senior leadership and asking questions hard questions, such as why wasn't the hospital's cardiac mortality rate the lowest in the state? They want to know what the problems are and what is being done to improve the situation. Chief executive officers (CEOs), senior leadership, and administrators often try to ignore the data and to assure the community that negative reports do not reflect what is actually happening in their hospital. They stress that their excellent, well trained physicians and nurses are doing a great job. But this response is not always convi ... read full excerpt from Measuring Health Care: Using Quality Data for Operational, Financial, and Clinical Improvement ebook