We’d Be In The Dark Without AHRQ

Here at Health Affairs we take the policy relevance of our work very seriously. As the leading health policy journal in the country, with the highest impact factor in our field, we work assiduously to find, edit, and publish the best scholarship that helps policymakers do their job. When we heard about threats to the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality’s (AHRQ) future, we set out to understand how the loss of AHRQ would affect the nation’s understanding of critical health policy issues. The results caused us great concern. While AHRQ contributes in many ways, we focused our analysis on the major data sources that are in the agency’s portfolio: the Consumer Assessment of Healthcare Providers and Systems (CAHPS) surveys, the Healthcare Cost and Utilization Project (HCUP) databases, and the Medical Expenditure Panel Survey (MEPS). CAHPS is a series of surveys about patients’ experiences and the data are routinely used to improve quality and access. HCUP is the largest publicly available all-payer inpatient care database and the nation’s best source of hospital data. MEPS collects data on insurance coverage, access to care, health status, and use of services. It is the only nationally representative survey that collects validated data on medical expenditures and it enables unique analyses due to its longitudinal design. These are some of our findings: The Medical Expenditure Panel Survey and its predecessor surveys are the number one source of data for Health Af...
Source: Health Affairs Blog - Category: Health Management Authors: Tags: Health Professionals Once in a Weil Quality AHRQ Alan Weil health policy research policymakers Surveys Source Type: blogs