National Strategy for Quality Improvement in Health Care

The National Strategy for Quality Improvement in Health Care (the National Quality Strategy) sets a course for improving the quality of health and health care for all Americans. It serves as a blue print for health care stakeholders across the country – patients, providers, employers, health insurance 
companies, academic researchers, and local, State, and Federal governments – that helps prioritize quality improvement efforts, share lessons, and measure our collective success. The initial National Quality Strategy, published in March 2011, established three aims and six priorities for quality improvement. This report details some of the work conducted in public and private sectors over the past year to advance and further refine those aims and priorities.

National Quality Strategy’s three aims:

• Better Care: Improve the overall quality of care, by making health care more patient-centered, reliable, accessible, and safe.
• Healthy People/Healthy Communities:Improve the health of the U.S. population by supporting proven interventions to address behavioral, social, and environmental determinants of health in addition to delivering higher-quality care.
• Affordable Care:Reduce the cost of quality health care for individuals, families, employers, and government.

National Quality Strategy’s six priorities:

• Making care safer by reducing harm caused in the delivery of care.
• Ensuring that each person and family are engaged as partners in their care.
• Promoting effective communication and coordination of care.
• Promoting the most effective prevention and treatment practicesfor the leading causes of mortality, starting with cardiovascular disease.
• Working with communities to promote wide use of best practices to enable healthy living.
• Making quality care more affordable for individuals, families, employers and governments by developing and spreading new health care delivery models