Since 1999, Gerard Anderson at Johns Hopkins University and the Fund's Robin Osborn have co-directed the International Working Group on Quality Indicators, a unique collaboration among government officials from Australia, Canada, New Zealand, the U.K., and the U.S.; leading quality experts; the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD); the Nuffield Trust; the Institute of Medicine; and the Canadian Council of Health Services Accreditation. Chaired by Arnold Epstein, M.D., of the Harvard School of Public Health, the project has produced the first-ever set of 30 quality indicators for benchmarking and comparing health care system performance across countries. The findings, published in the May/June 2004 issue of
Health Affairs, attracted wide media coverage, including the
Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, Newsday, National Public Radio, CNN, ABC, CBS, Fox News,
The Economist, Canadian Globe and Mail, Toronto Star, Independent, and
Sydney Morning Herald. The working group's report, published in June 2004, had 10,000 downloads from the Fund's Web site in the first week.
(2)In a collaboration with the Fund, the OECD is building on the Fund's work through its International Health Care Quality Indicators Project, also chaired by Dr. Epstein. OECD has expanded the project to include 21 countries and is further developing the scope and depth of the indicator set. This project was endorsed by health ministers at the OECD May 2004 ministerial meeting; the OECD is now securing the necessary funding to enable it to institutionalize the collection of international quality data.
