Report: Half of U.S. patients receive poor medical care

About half of all U.S. patients receive inadequate health care, the private National Committee for Quality Assurance said in its annual report released Wednesday. The report also shows that wild variations in medical care led to 79,000 avoidable deaths and $1.8 billion in additional medical costs last year. For treatment of a range of common conditions the report described a substantial gap in quality between the best providers and the national average that would not be tolerated in almost any other sector of the U.S. economy. For example, failure to control high blood pressure last year resulted in up to 26,000 deaths that could have been avoided with competent medical care, the report said. The differences in health care quality persist even as health insurance premiums have risen by more than 10% annually for the past four years. "This report underscores that all too often we are not getting good value for that money," said Peter V. Lee, president and chief executive of the Pacific Business Group on Health, a coalition of businesses that provide health insurance to 3 million people. But the report also found that health insurance plans that publicly report their performance showed marked improvement in most areas, including cholesterol management, diabetes care, breast cancer screening, and flu shots for adults. Plans that publicly report on their performance, however, cover only about a quarter of the U.S. population, about 69 million people. (AP)