According to The Commonwealth Fund’s David Blumenthal, M.D., and the Institute of Medicine’s J. Michael McGinnis, M.D., the proliferation of health care metrics, some of them imperfect, is “increasing the burden and blurring the ability to focus on issues most important to better health and health care.” In a JAMA “Viewpoint,” Blumenthal and McGinnis discuss the new Institute of Medicine report Vital Signs: Core Metrics for Health and Health Care Progress, which identifies a set of measures that should be required at national, state, local, and institutional levels and recommends steps to implement and refine them. Blumenthal chaired the IOM Committee on Core Metrics for Better Health at Lower Cost, which produced the report.
