Dear Colleague:

Tracking the steady stream of research and data about the performance of the health care system can be a daunting task. Performance Snapshots is a new resource on The Commonwealth Fund's Web site that synthesizes this valuable information--giving easy access to charts and narratives that tell the story of the health system's shortcomings and progress in key areas. Each Snapshot provides suggestions for improving health care practice or policy, along with references to related literature and resources.

Performance Snapshots has been designed to meet the needs of diverse users including clinicians, managers, policy analysts, researchers, journalists, and educators. More than 80 topics--featuring 180 charts, with regular updates and expansions to come--can be searched or browsed in multiple ways. Additionally, users can create their own custom collections of topics and charts that can be downloaded as PDFs or PPTs.

This new resource augments the work of the Commonwealth Fund's Commission on a High Performance Health System and offers additional insights into performance issues raised by the Commission's National Scorecard on U.S. Health System Performance. A project team led by Sheila Leatherman, research professor at the University of North Carolina's School of Public Health, and Douglas McCarthy, president of Issues Research, Inc., selected data from authoritative sources such as academic journals, government agencies, and private foundations.

To explore Performance Snapshots, visit the Fund Web site at www.cmwf.org/snapshots. Also visit Chart Cart, another online resource that offers easy access to charts from Fund publications and presentations.