How the national healthcare quality and disparities reports can catalyze quality improvement.

BACKGROUND: The purpose of the National Reports on Healthcare Quality and Disparities is to enhance awareness of quality and health care disparities, track progress, understand variations, and catalyze improvements in health care.

OBJECTIVES: The objective of this paper is to propose a model that will facilitate a user's progression from knowledge to action and to show how the reports, its data warehouse, associated products, and Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality resources are integrated and focused on a comprehensive campaign to improve health care quality.

DESIGN: The design of the paper is to present a conceptual model and to show how implementation strategies for the reports fit the model.

FINDINGS: The authors propose a quality improvement supply chain model to help elucidate the links of the process, corresponding developmental stages that potential users need to master and progress through, and "just-in-time" supply chain inputs at each of the corresponding stages, and populate the model with examples.

CONCLUSION: The traditional ways of disseminating knowledge derived from science through reports and conferences are inadequate to the humbling need for vast improvements in the US health care system. Our model suggests the need for a wide variety of information, packaged in a diverse ways, and delivered just in time and on demand. It encourages the alignment of decision makers and researchers, along with information intermediaries and innovation brokers, to make the information production cycle more efficient and effective. Future iterations of the reports will improve relevance, meaning, and distribution of information to facilitate its uptake by potential users.