Variations in quality causing needless deaths, new annual NCQA report says.

The National Committee for Quality Assurances (NCQA's) annual assessment of healthcare quality noted some good news and some bad news for the healthcare community. For the good news, more health plans and providers are approaching optimal results for several measures related to cardiovascular care and cancer prevention. However, failure of all plans to deliver the right preventive or follow-up care for other common conditions--such as diabetes and high blood pressure--means that more than 57,000 Americans are dying unnecessarily every year, NCQA estimated.