The lede:

Despite intense focus on improving care and keeping patients safe from harm, American health care quality is only about 2% better this decade than last, according to the U.S. Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality. That is just not good enough, say leaders of a major new initiative aimed at coordinating quality improvement and patient safety efforts among physicians, hospitals, accreditation and certification bodies, health plans, payers and patients.

The initiative is known as the National Priorities Partnership (www.nationalprioritiespartnership.org). It was launched in November by the National Quality Forum, a voluntary standards-setting body that convened 28 national organizations to work together to cut unnecessary care and improve quality and patient safety.

The whole shebang.

The lede:

For 10 years, Oregon stood alone as the state with a legal physician-assisted suicide process. But two other states now allow the practice.

Washington voters in November 2008 passed a ballot initiative legalizing aid in dying. Then in December 2008, Montana Judge Dorothy McCarter ruled that state homicide laws unconstitutionally restrict terminally ill patients’ right to dignified deaths.

The whole shebang.