Hospital performance measures and quality of care

Increasingly, quality improvement initiatives emphasize public reporting of hospital performance measures, to encourage providers to improve, to help consumers pick providers, and to determine provider payments. Although these measures are based on compliance with well-established processes of care, it is unknown whether quality measured in this way is correlated with, or predictive of, clinical outcomes. This Issue Brief summarizes studies that examine and quantify the relationship between frequently used measures of hospital performance and hospital mortality.