Improving the Quality of Hospital Care in America

Over the past few years, several large studies have shown,14 and the Institute of Medicine has emphasized,5 that the quality of health care in the United States is not nearly at the level that we should expect from the world's most expensive health care system. Problems with quality are pervasive throughout both outpatient and inpatient settings and may be responsible for thousands of deaths each year.3,4 In this issue of the Journal, Williams and colleagues,6 from the Joint Commission on Accreditation of Healthcare Organizations (JCAHO), present time-series data from their “core measures” program, in which hospitals seeking accreditation . . .