Does quality of care systematically differ among government-owned, private not-for-profit, and for-profit hospitals? A large empirical literature provides conflicting evidence. Through quantitative review of 46 studies since 1990, we find that several study features that can explain divergent results: analytic methods, disease studied, and data sources. For unprofitable care, how studies handle market competition and regional differences account for substantial variation. Policymakers should be aware that differences in results appear to arise predominantly from differences between studies' analytic methods. Moreover, conventional methods of meta-analytic synthesis should be applied with great caution given the considerable overlap among studied hospitals.

Although the quality of health care would logically seem to be a universal concept, this study hypothesized that physicians and their patients could differ in their perceptions of high-quality care and that those beliefs might vary by country. Such a mismatch in beliefs may be especially important as clinical practice guidelines developed in the United States are globalized.

A survey of 20 statements describing various components of health care delivery and quality was sent to pediatric cardiologists in 33 countries, who ranked the statements in order of priority for ideal health care. Each participating physician administered the questionnaire to the parents of children with congenital heart disease; 554 questionnaires were received and analyzed. A subanalysis of 9 countries with the largest number of responses was done (Canada, the Czech Republic, France, Germany, Italy, The Netherlands, Sweden, the United Kingdom, and the United States). Doctors and parents rated the same 4 statements among the top 5: the doctor is skillful and knowledgeable; the doctor explains health problems, tests, and treatments in a way the patient can understand; a basic level of healthcare is available to all citizens regardless of their ability to pay; and treatment causes the patient to feel physically well.

Overall, parents' responses differed more among countries than those of physicians; the magnitude of the difference between parents and physicians varied by country. This discrepancy highlights a potential mismatch between patients' and physicians' views about the desired components of health care delivery, in particular the application of American quality standards for health care to systems in other countries.

This issue of CHP/PCOR's quarterly newsletter, which covers news from the winter 2006 quarter, includes articles about:

• a comprehensive review of worldwide anthrax cases from 1900 to 2005, conducted by CHP/PCOR researchers, which found that timely diagnosis and antibiotic treatment, along with pleural fluid drainage, are key to anthrax patients' survival;
• an early-stage research project in which CHP/PCOR core faculty member Grant Miller is collaborating with an NGO in Bangladesh to study whether villagers' traditional cooking practices are contributing to life-threatening respiratory infections;
• assertions by two CHP/PCOR health policy experts that health-savings accounts -- the cornerstone of President Bush's healthcare agenda -- won't save much money and won't address the fundamental problems of the U.S. healthcare system;
• the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality's release of the Pediatric Quality Indicators, developed by CHP/PCOR researchers and collaborators. This is the first set of data-analysis tools specifically designed to help hospitals monitor their quality of care for hospitalized children; and
• a roundup of CHP/PCOR's 7th annual retreat, which featured panel discussions on improving healthcare quality, conducting health services research in developing countries, and health systems comparisons across industrialized nations.

Background:

Coronary atherosclerosis develops slowly over decades but is frequently characterized clinically by sudden unstable episodes. Patients who present with unstable coronary disease, such as acute myocardial infarction, may systematically differ from patients who present with relatively stable coronary disease, such as exertional angina.

Objective:

To examine whether medication use or patient characteristics influence the mode of initial clinical presentation of coronary disease.

Design:

Case-control study.

Setting:

Large integrated health care delivery system in northern California.

Patients:

Adults whose first clinical presentation of coronary disease was either acute myocardial infarction (n = 916) or stable exertional angina (n = 468).

Measurements:

Use of cardiac medications before the event from pharmacy databases and demographic, lifestyle, and clinical characteristics from self-report and clinical and administrative databases.

Results:

Compared with patients with incident stable exertional angina, patients with incident acute myocardial infarction were more likely to be men, smokers, physically inactive, and hypertensive but were less likely to have a parental history of coronary disease. Patients presenting with myocardial infarction were much less likely to have received statins (19.3% vs. 40.4%; P 0.001) and ß-blockers (19.0% vs. 47.7%; P 0.001) than patients presenting with exertional angina. After adjustment for potential confounders, recent use of statins (adjusted odds ratio, 0.45 [95% CI, 0.32 to 0.62]) and ß-blockers (adjusted odds ratio, 0.26 [CI, 0.19 to 0.35]) was associated with lower likelihoods of presenting with an acute myocardial infarction than with stable angina.

Limitations:

This observational study did not have information on all possible confounding factors, including use of aspirin therapy.

Conclusion:

Statin and ß-blocker use was associated with lower odds of presenting with an acute myocardial infarction than with stable angina. Additional studies are needed to confirm that these therapies protect against unstable, higher-risk clinical presentations of coronary disease.

This report documents the work undertaken in Phase I of a two-phase process to develop the Pediatric Quality Indicators as part of the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) contract, "Support for Quality Indicators II" under subcontract with

Battelle Memorial Institute by Stanford University and the University of California at

Davis. This work was initiated in response to a charge to develop indicators of children's health care utilizing inpatient administrative data. These indicators examine both the quality of inpatient care, as well as the quality of outpatient care that can be inferred from inpatient data, such as potentially preventable hospitalizations.

The report contains three main sections:

1. The introduction section launches the actual technical report and provides background

regarding pediatric indicator development and the current effort to develop an indicator

set based on administrative data.

2. The methods section outlines the approach used to gather evidence to identify and

evaluate potential patient safety indicators, including the literature review, empirical

analyses, and clinician panel review, as well as the operationalization of indicators and

evaluation of risk adjustment approaches.

3. The results section is divided into two parts. The first part highlights general themes

and summarizes the overall results. The second part provides detailed results for each

AHRQ QI examined.

Several appendixes provide additional detail regarding methods and results.

Most panels that develop clinical practice guidelines are poorly equipped to address resource allocation or cost issues associated with management options. This risks neglect, arbitrariness, lack of transparency, and methodological flaws in consideration of resource allocation. We provide recommendations for guideline panels to promote greater transparency and rigor. We suggest focusing on resource allocation issues for only a limited number of recommendations and provide criteria for selecting those in which economic considerations are likely to influence the direction or strength of the recommendation. Panels should involve a health economist to assist with the systematic review and critical interpretation of relevant economic analyses. They should carefully define the intended audience and may consider issuing alternative recommendations when available resources vary widely across target clinical settings. Targeting a limited number of recommendations for the consideration of resource allocation issues, and ensuring methodologically high-quality review, will best serve guideline panels, and the health-care providers and patients they hope to assist.