Medicare: Federal Efforts to Enhance Patient Quality of Care

Pursuant to a congressional request, GAO reviewed the Health Care Financing Administration's (HCFA) efforts to enhance the quality of care for Medicare beneficiaries, focusing on: (1) the strategies to ensure that Medicare providers furnish quality health care, in both fee-for-service providers and health maintenance organizations (HMO); and (2) experts' views on desirable attributes of a quality assurance strategy if more managed care options are made available to Medicare beneficiaries.