One of the founding principles, and an essential element of The Alliance mission, includes a focus on the quality of health care. Quality problems are significant and result in poor health outcomes, unnecessary work, and increased costs.

The QualityCounts™ report shows all hospital care is not the same. The quality, safety and cost of care vary from hospital to hospital. Our report is a step toward the kind of information that you need to help make important health care decisions.

Public reporting creates a powerful incentive for hospitals to improve. Results from a multi-year research study on the 2001 QualityCounts report were published in Health Affairs, a national health policy journal. Dr. Judy Hibbard and her colleagues from the University of Oregon found hospitals that were included in the public report made significant improvements compared to hospitals that only received a private report or no report at all.

"The Alliance and its clinical partners are once again showing the rest of America how performance transparency can both serve consumers and honor excellence in health care delivery."

Arnold Milstein, MD
Chief Physician, Mercer Health & Benefits
and Co-Founder, The Leapfrog Group