Improving medical care for West Virginia seniors

Using data published by the Health Care Financing Administration (HCFA), supplemented with information obtained from West Virginia Medicare claims data and Medicare hospital records, we compared the performance of West Virginia physicians and hospitals on 22 quality of care indicators for six common conditions. The conditions are myocardial infarction, congestive heart failure, atrial fibrillation, stroke, breast cancer screening and pneumonia. Quality indicator performance for most indicators in West Virginia from 1997-98 was lower than the average of the 19 states with data collected at the same time. For some indicators, such as early use of beta blockers following myocardial infarction (52.7%), administration of influenza vaccine (58.2%), and warfarin prescription to atrial fibrillation patients (45.1%), the state's care ranked near the bottom. However, quality scores varied widely among West Virginia health care providers, suggesting that statewide improvement in care is feasible. Ongoing efforts among physicians, hospitals and the peer review organization are aimed at achieving such improvement.