National Healthcare Quality Report 2005

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The basic structure of the NHQR is unchanged from last year and consists of the following:

Highlights summarizes key themes from the 2005 report.
Chapter 1: Introduction and Methods documents the organization, data sources, and methods used in the 2005 report and describes major changes from previous reports.
Chapter 2: Effectiveness examines the quality of health care in the general U.S. population, focusing on nine clinical conditions or care settings based largely on Healthy People 2010 (HP2010) condition areas. Measures of quality of health care used in this chapter are identical to measures used in the National Healthcare Disparities Report (NHDR) except when data to examine disparities are unavailable for inclusion in the NHDR.
Chapter 3: Patient Safety tracks measures of patient safety, including hospital-acquired infections, injuries or adverse events due to medical care, and medication safety.
Chapter 4: Timeliness examines the delivery of time-sensitive clinical care and patient perceptions of the timeliness and accessibility of their care.
Chapter 5: Patient Centeredness tracks patients' experiences with care for both routine and emergency services in order to incorporate the patient's experience and perspective into the report.

Two appendixes are available online:

Measure Specifications Appendix provides information about each database analyzed for the NHQR including data type, sample design, and primary content; detailed methods for select databases analyzed for the NHQR; and information about how to generate each measure. Measures highlighted in the report are described, as well as other measures that were examined but not included in the text of the report.
Data Tables Appendix provides detailed tables for most measures analyzed for the NHQR, including both measures highlighted in the report text and measures examined but not included in the text. A few measures cannot support detailed tables and are not included in the appendix.