Public reporting in health and long-term care to facilitate provider choice

In the policy summary authors review the literature on the measurement and reporting of quality information to aid the public in choosing health and long-term care providers, provide insights to support future investment in public reporting systems, and summarize strategies aiming to increase the use of reporting by patients and users.

It shows that widespread use of quality information has been slow to materialize across health and long-term care, despite the extensive investment in reporting systems by governments and private sector organizations. There is, however, some evidence that reporting encourages providers to address quality issues to improve their reputation in the sector.

The summary synthesizes evidence from a variety of European and US-based public reporting systems to assist policy-makers, care providers and information developers in creating reports more likely to be used and valued by patients and users when choosing health or long-term care providers. It was published as part of a European Commission Seventh Framework Programme project, the European Union Cross-Border Care Collaboration (EUCBCC).