Most Get Mediocre Health Care - study

By JEFF DONN, Associated Press Writer Wed. Mar. 15, 2006

BOSTON - Startling research from the biggest study ever of U.S. health care quality suggests that Americans — rich, poor, black, white — get roughly equal treatment, but it's woefully mediocre for all.

"This study shows that health care has equal-opportunity defects," said Dr. Donald Berwick, who runs the nonprofit Institute for Healthcare Improvement in Cambridge, Mass. The survey of nearly 7,000 patients, reported Thursday in the New England Journal of Medicine, considered only urban-area dwellers who sought treatment, but it still challenged some stereotypes: These blacks and Hispanics actually got slightly better medical treatment than whites.

"It doesn't matter who you are. It doesn't matter whether you're rich or poor, white or black, insured or uninsured," said chief author Dr. Steven Asch, at the Rand Health research institute, in Santa Monica, Calif. "We all get equally mediocre care."

Overall, patients received only 55 percent of recommended steps for top-quality care — and no group did much better or worse than that. As to gender, women came out slightly ahead with 57 percent, compared to 52 percent for men. Young adults did slightly better than the elderly.

Article: http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20060315/ap_on_he_me/mediocre_health_care

Study:

Conclusions The differences among sociodemographic subgroups in the observed quality of health care are small in comparison with the gap for each subgroup between observed and desirable quality of health care. Quality-improvement programs that focus solely on reducing disparities among sociodemographic subgroups may miss larger opportunities to improve care.

New England Journal of Medicine study: http://content.nejm.org/cgi/content/full/354/11/1147