The pursuit of quality by business coalitions: a national survey: business coalitions have the means to affect the quality of care in their members' health coverage, new survey data reveal.

The extent to which business coalitions and their employer members are catalysts for improving quality of care is of interest to policymakers, who need to know where and under what circumstances the marketplace succeeds on its own in assuring quality. Using data from the 1998 National Business Coalition on Health annual survey, this paper indicates that most coalitions have an infrastructure in place that could be tapped to advance quality goals. Although the survey data cannot tell us the extent to which coalitions are exercising their enhanced market influence specifically to improve quality, interviews with coalition leaders provide insights about how quality considerations can factor into coalition strategies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]