This series of 13 case studies on patient safety was published in the Annals of Internal Medicine and presented during grand rounds at several hospitals. The cases are based on real experiences and include expert analyses.

This executive summary presents the findings of a RAND Health effort to gather and synthesize the emerging body of lessons that are being learned about physician performance feedback.

Incentive programs are all about behavior change. Program sponsors must consider whose behavior must change to improve quality and contain costs. Learning from past mistakes is key to successful strategies.

This publication provides an overview of a September 2005, meeting of the SAFER California Healthcare coalition — including the University of California’s five medical campuses and supporters — created to advance California’s patient safety agenda.

Examining California’s efforts to improve Medi-Cal managed care, this report highlights the development and implementation of a new performance-based incentive for health plan contractors in 14 counties.

Mobilizing California hospitals and health systems to improve quality of care and patient safety took center stage at a December 2005 roundtable. This overview looks at the issues and the resulting action plans.

This initiative is a statewide program that focuses on developing and evaluating financial and non-financial incentives to improve the quality of health care being delivered in California.

This Health Affairs study by Wennberg et al. shows that care for chronically ill seniors costs Medicare four times more at some California hospitals than others but results in no better care or patient satisfaction. Also five commentaries from Baucus, Priselac, Reinhardt, Schaeffer and McMurtry, and Straube.

This report details the results of consumer testing in developing a prototype guide on Medi-Cal managed care quality, and how the guide was modified in response to test results.

This Health Affairs article by Gillies et al. discusses findings that show California's medical groups are more inclined to use care management processes to improve quality than physician organizations in other states.

This report examines California’s relatively poor performance on standardized quality indicators for care delivered to Medicare fee-for-service beneficiaries by region, race/ethnicity, and socio-economic status.

Each brief addresses one aspect of the experience of patient and consumer groups in improving health care quality, highlighting the strategies and concepts arising from the work of the grantees and identifying best practices.

This report lays a foundation for developing effective report design and dissemination methods for Medi-Cal managed care programs. This "how to" report examines the challenges of producing guides for low-literacy and culturally and linguistically diverse audiences.

Through interviews and a literature review, this report explores the strengths and weaknesses of consumer surveys for culturally and linguistically diverse populations and makes recommendations for improvement.

Based on interviews, this report examines how medical groups are preparing for pay-for-performance models, their priorities, and preferences for technical assistance that may support efforts to improve chronic care.