In its recent report, The State of Health Care Quality, NCQA concludes that the quality of care delivered by the 141 health plans who voluntarily report data has improved for an eighth consecutive year. But the rate of improvement has slowed leading President Margaret O’Kane to say “We must redouble our efforts to understand the value yielded by the $2 trillion we invest in health care.”

The report provides over 80 pages of trended HEDIS and other quality measures, but one of the most telling statistics is in figure 10 of the executive summary where it is noted that the NCQA’s “examination of the top 10 percent of health plans shows what our health care system is able to achieve. If the entire health care system could perform as well as the top achievers, NCQA estimates that as many as 75,000 lives could be saved each year and our national bill for hospital care would be reduced by as much as $3.7 billion.”