With support from the major hospital associations, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services will be collecting and publicly reporting information provided by nearly all U.S. hospitals on 10 quality-of-care measures for three conditions common among Medicare beneficiaries. Under this grant, Harvard University researchers will link hospital reports with information on hospital characteristics and patient volume data on the three conditions to investigate the following: 1) how hospital performance varies across quality measures; 2) the types of hospitals that report higher-quality care; 3) whether hospitals that score well have lower mortality rates; and 4) the relationship, if any, between hospitals that perform well on quality measures and those that perform well on efficiency measures. These analyses will produce information that could be used to improve the care provided to Medicare beneficiaries as well as other patients. http://www.hsph.harvard.edu/index.html