Projects

Coordinating Center for Comparative Health System Performance

2016-2021

Overview
Evidence & Insights
Related Staff

Prepared For

U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality

The Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality created the Comparative Health System Performance Initiative to study how health care delivery systems promote evidence-based practices in delivering care and to understand the connections between the dissemination of patient-centered outcomes research (PCOR), patient outcomes, and the effective use of resources.

The initiative established three Centers of Excellence to study high-performing health care systems. These centers identify, classify, track, and compare health systems to reveal the factors that affect the use of evidence-based medicine and to identify best practices in the dissemination and implementation of PCOR.

The initiative also established a Coordinating Center, led by Mathematica, to leverage the expertise, infrastructure, and resources across the Centers of Excellence, with the goal of speeding the adoption of PCOR to improve care and efficiency within health systems. To achieve this goal, the Coordinating Center performed the following:

Facilitated coordination and collaboration

The Coordinating Center promoted collaboration between the Centers of Excellence to help align the concepts, data, methods, and measures needed to compare health system performance.

Convened experts and stakeholders

The Coordinating Center convened a technical expert panel. These experts regularly met to advise AHRQ and the Coordinating Center about data and performance measures, types of evidence that were most useful to stakeholders, research gaps, dissemination products, and effective strategies for reaching stakeholders.

Facilitated coordination and collaboration

The Coordinating Center promoted collaboration between the Centers of Excellence to help align the concepts, data, methods, and measures needed to compare health system performance.

Convened experts and stakeholders

Produced Compendium on U.S. health care systems

The Coordinating Center created the Compendium of U.S. Health Systems for 2016 and 2018, a publicly available data resource that identifies and describes health systems and the hospitals and group practices in systems. The Compendium is a valuable resource for those interested in examining the characteristics and components of health systems and their performance.

Compendium Research and Dissemination

The Coordinating Center worked with AHRQ to conduct and disseminate a host of analyses examining systems, their components, and how they deliver care. For example, the Coordinating Center and AHRQ combined the Compendium with other data sources to describe the landscape of health systems in the U.S. in 2016 and 2018. This work included analyses on the consolidation of providers overall and by physician specialty and markets. The Coordinating Center also examined other important aspects of systems, such as their participation in alternative payment models, overlap with academic medical centers, and the extent to which they offer health insurance plans. Findings were disseminated in various formats including data briefs posted on AHRQ’s website, blogs, and peer-reviewed journal articles.

Visit the Comparative Health System Performance Initiative website to learn more about this work and access the Compendium.

Event

Advancing Understanding of Health Care Delivery Using the AHRQ Compendium of U.S. Health Systems

Jan 12, 2021

Mathematica held a webinar to learn more about the Compendium data and linkage files and how this valuable resource can shed light on important policy questions about health systems.

Learn More

News