A new Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality Web site offers more than 200 samples of health care quality report cards produced by various organizations.

The site aims to help those developing report cards by showing them what options are available. Both the content and the format of reports appear on the site, which includes reports on quality of health plans, hospitals, medical groups, individual doctors, nursing homes and other providers of care.

"The demand for information about health care quality is rising rapidly, and it will be increasingly important for this information to be presented clearly and effectively," Dr. Carolyn M. Clancy, AHRQ director, said in a statement. "Report card developers can use the examples from the Health Care Report Card Compendium to explore the scope and information they might want to cover, as well as various approaches to presenting their own organization's comparative data."

In announcing the searchable database, AHRQ officials said they were making no judgments about which sites are effective and valuable. Inclusion of a report in the compendium does not constitute an endorsement by the agency, which is part of the Department of Health and Human Services.

In August 2006, an executive order signed by President Bush committed federal health programs to make quality information available to all enrollees. Public reporting about quality of care is also an element of HHS Secretary Mike Leavitt's Value-Driven Health Care Initiative.

The compendium appears on AHRQ’s Talking Quality Web site, a forum for sharing information about health care performance measurement.