A guide to indicators for care of women. Each chapter summarizes the results of the literature review for a particular condition, provides recommended indicators based on that review, and lists the cited studies. Clinical conditions range from acne and asthma to depression and prenatal care.

This report is one of five volumes providing detailed information on the QA Tools, RAND's comprehensive, clinically based system for assessing quality of care for children and adults. The QA Tools indicators encompass screening, diagnosis, treatment, and follow-up in 46 clinical areas and cover a variety of modes of providing care, including history, physical examination, laboratory study, medication, and other interventions and contacts. Development of each indicator was based on the ratings of a panel of experts in the relevant fields and on a focused review of the scientific literature, which is clearly documented for each clinical condition. This volume focuses on indicators for care of children and adolescents. Each chapter summarizes the results of the literature review for a particular condition, provides RAND staff's recommended indicators based on that review, and lists the cited studies. In addition, this work details the process by which the expert panel evaluated the indicators and the final disposition of each indicator. Clinical conditions covered in this volume are: Acne, preventive services, allergic rhinitis, asthma, attention deficit disorder, cesarean delivery, depression, developmental screening, diabetes mellitus, acute diarrheal disease, family planning/contraception, fever without source of infection in children under 3 years of age, headache, immunizations, otitis media, acute otitis media, prenatal care, sickle cell screening, tuberculosis, upper respiratory infections, urinary tract infections, vaginitis and sexually transmitted diseases, well child care. Other RAND Health titles on the QA Tools system focus on indicators for general medicine, oncology and HIV, cardiopulmonary conditions, and women.

This report is one of a series of volumes describing the QA Tools, a comprehensive, clinically based system for assessing care for children and adults. The quality indicators that comprise these Tools cover 46 clinical areas and all 4 functions of medicine-screening, diagnosis, treatment, and follow-up. The indicators also cover a variety of modes of providing care, including history, physical examination, laboratory study, medication, and other interventions and contacts. Development of each indicator was based on a review of the literature. Each volume documents the literature on which the indicators were based, explains how the clinical areas and indicators were selected, and describes what is included in the overall system. The QA Tools were developed with funding from public and private sponsors-the Health Care Financing Administration, the Agency for Health care Research and Quality, the California Health Care Foundation, and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.

This report is one of five volumes providing detailed information on the QA Tools, RAND's comprehensive, clinically based system for assessing quality of care for children and adults. The QA Tools indicators encompass screening, diagnosis, treatment, and follow-up in 46 clinical areas and cover a variety of modes of providing care, including history, physical examination, laboratory study, medication, and other interventions and contacts. Development of each indicator was based on the ratings of a panel of experts in the relevant fields and on a focused review of the scientific literature, which is clearly documented for each clinical condition. This volume focuses on indicators for care of general medical conditions. Each chapter summarizes the results of the literature review for a particular condition, provides RAND staff's recommended indicators based on that review, and notes the level of scientific evidence supporting each indicator along with the relevant citations. In addition, this work details the process by which the expert panel evaluated the indicators and the final disposition of each indicator. Clinical conditions covered in this volume are: Acne, alcohol dependence, allergic rhinitis, benign prostatic hyperplasia, cataracts, cholelithiasis, dementia, depression, diabetes mellitus, hormone replacement therapy, headache, hip fracture, hysterectomy, inguinal hernia, acute low back pain, orthopedic conditions. Other RAND Health titles on the QA Tools system focus on indicators for children and adolescents, oncology and HIV, cardiopulmonary conditions, and women.

Developing and implementing a valid system of-quality assessment is essential for effective functioning of the health care system. Although a number of groups have produced quality assessment tools, these tools typically suffer from a variety of limitations. Information is obtained on only a few dimensions of quality, the tools rely exclusively on administrative data, they examine quality only for users of services rather than the population, or they fail to provide a scientific basis for the quality indicators. Under funding from public and private sponsors, including the Health Care Financing Administration (HCFA), the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ), the California HealthCare Foundation, and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (RWJ), RAND has developed and tested a comprehensive, clinically based system for assessing quality of care for children and adults. We call this system QA Tools. In this introduction, we discuss how the clinical areas were selected, how the indicators were chosen, and what is included in the overall system. We then describe in detail how we developed the indicators for children and adolescents.