For the 11th consecutive year, the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality has released complementary reports that assess the U.S. healthcare system’s performance in the areas of healthcare quality, access, and disparities in care.

The two reports—the 2013 National Healthcare Quality Report and the National Healthcare Disparities Report—provide information on hundreds of healthcare measures categorized into specific areas such as effectiveness, patient safety, timeliness, care coordination, efficiency, and access to care. As with previous reports, the data years covered vary across measures, although most trend analyses included data points from 2000–2002 to 2010–2011.

The reports address three key questions:

• What is the status of healthcare quality, access, and disparities in the United States?
• How have the levels of these three measures changed over time?
• Where are healthcare quality, access, and disparities improving, and where are these markers of care getting worse?

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