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Talking Quality : Guidance for sponsors of consumer reports on health care quality
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Guidance for sponsors of consumer reports on health care quality

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How to Use This Site

I’ve never worked on a consumer report on quality before. Where should I start?

  • If you’re new to quality reporting, you may want to start by reading Make the Case for Consumer Reporting. That document will help you understand the rationale for reporting quality information to consumers and the issues surrounding this strategy.
  • If you are involved in a new initiative to report on quality, begin with the section called Plan Your Reporting Project to learn about gathering helpful information, making decisions, and navigating your way through the reporting cycle.
  • If you are new to an ongoing project, you may want to explore this site to better understand the decisions that your colleagues have made, where your project is in the cycle, and how to proceed.

I’ve been putting out report cards for years. How can I use this site?

If you already know something about quality reporting, you can use this site to learn more about the current stage of your project and the decisions or steps you may want to anticipate. For example:

  • If you’re in the planning stage, you may want to read the section called Assess Your Reporting Project so that you can budget the time, funds, and resources needed to evaluate your efforts at the end of the cycle.
  • If you’re trying to figure out how to display quality scores, you could consult the material on presenting comparative results in the section called Translate Data Into Information.
  • If you’re working on the text of your report, you may want to check out the advice in the section called Explain and Motivate, which talks about what you need to explain to consumers as well as other things they may want to know.

You can also browse TalkingQuality to get new ideas that you may want to incorporate into your next report on quality.

I need to plan a quality reporting project for my organization. How can this site help me?

There are two ways in which this site can help you develop a plan.

  • Read Plan Your Reporting Project. This section of this site reviews what you need to consider when you start planning a project of this kind and walks you through the key decisions you will have to make.
  • Download Your Project Checklist. The Workbook presents a set of questions for you to answer, recognizing that you may not be able to answer all of them at once. The idea is to make you aware of the kind of information you’ll need to design a successful report. You can access the Workbook from any page on the site.

    Under each question in the Workbook is a list of suggested tasks to help you make assignments, keep track of what you know and have accomplished, and focus on what still needs to be done. You can use this list to create a planning document of your own.

I’m a consumer who wants to learn more about health care quality. Where will I find information intended for me?

If you are a health care consumer, the information on this Web site was not really designed for you. To learn more about health care quality, you may want to go directly to the following Web sites for consumers:

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