California ranks 42nd among the states in healthcare quality, according to a 2009 Commonwealth Fund report.*

Our healthcare "non-system" has many interacting but uncoordinated parts, with multiple points at which failure can and does occur. Research shows widespread under-use of effective care, provider-driven over-use of unwarranted services, and misuse of services that reflects provider, not patient, treatment preferences when more than one medically reasonable treatment option exists. Medical errors are also far too common. In short, quality problems not only exist everywhere, as the Institute of Medicine reported in 2001, they are also disturbingly persistent.

CHCC is dedicated to remedying these health system failures by:

Organizing large and small group purchasers of healthcare in local markets and statewide to assert their combined voices as an educational force for better care and lower costs;

Developing collaborations with health plans and service providers to measure and report performance, establish improvement goals, and reward providers when they verifiably meet these goals; and...

Educating stakeholders on public policies to achieve improvements in health industry transparency and accountability.

   * Aiming Higher: Results from a State Scorecard on Health System Performance, 2009, Douglas
      McCarthy, M.B.A., Sabrina K. H. How, M.P.A. and Cathy Schoen, M.S., The Commonwealth Fund Joel C.
      Cantor, Sc.D., and Dina Belloff, M.A., Rutgers University Center for State Health Policy, page 79.