Online calculator outlines bottom line business case for quality

I’ve been playing with NCQA’s Quality Dividend Calculator – a cool toy that estimates how much improving health care quality can mean to a company’s bottom line. Visitors input some basic information about a company (I made mine up) such as number of employees, ages/gender, total revenues, overhead percentages, area of the US, industry, how often you replace sick workers with a temp, etc. The calculator estimates the number of workers suffering from various chronic diseases, how many sick days they take, productivity losses, what it costs your company and finally shows the difference choosing a higher quality plan can make for your bottom line. I was just trying to procrastinate writing a paper, but I ended up learning a lot.
Ellen Andrews