On May 25, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, the Delmarva Foundation for Medical Care, and Mathematica sponsored a one-day conference on the impact of hospitals’ publicly reported quality measures on hospitals themselves. Conference goals were to explore how hospitals achieve...

Senior hospital executives responding to a 2005 national telephone survey report that Hospital Compare and other public reports on hospital quality measures have helped to focus hospital leadership attention on quality matters. This article notes that the executives also report increased...

We conducted a survey to examine differences among health-related decision-making consumer segments with regard to knowledge, skills, attitudes, and behaviors pertinent to comparative effectiveness research (CER). Four consumer segments that were defined based on levels of skills and motivation...

To improve health outcomes, clinicians and patients must have evidence-based information available to help them make informed decisions, the knowledge and skills to use this information, and positive attitudes about the value of using comparative effectiveness research (CER) in decision making....

The new Medicare Part D benefit, which began on January 1, 2006, expanded Medicare to include prescription drugs, and it required beneficiaries to change how they interact with the program. Past experience with low enrollment in a variety of programs designed to aid low-income Medicare...

Widespread and growing use of the internet as a medium for disseminating and gathering information has raised concerns about users' ability to assess the quality of the health and medical information presented on websites. The Office of Disease Prevention and Health Promotion has identified six...

To provide better value and improve patient care in the U.S. health care system, comparative effectiveness research (CER) needs to be disseminated, implemented, and interpreted. This brief, the second from Mathematica’s Center on Health Care Effectiveness, examines how to put CER into use at...