Patient care report cards: an analysis.

In the competitive health care market of the 1990s, health care institutions face a significant number of fiscal challenges that threaten their survival. As part of the survival process, institutions must demonstrate--to the public and to regulatory agencies--that they are measuring the effect of their care structures and processes. Institutions must be willing to share these measurements with the public as well as to use them internally to identify performance problems and document the impact of process improvements or other changes. The report card is a simple, easily understood method for reporting quality data and comparing varying aspects of patient care processes and outcomes. However, as measurements, report cards are not robust enough to serve as the sole source of quality-related data, and interinstitutional comparisons may be misleading. This article explores the new phenomenon known as patient care report cards and discusses their usage in quality measurement and improvement.