Simultaneously, the National Cancer Policy Board and the President's Advisory Commission on Consumer Protection and Quality in the Health Care Industry published similar reports.

[1] Given limitations of the existing U.S. health care system, it proposes a new framework for health care with four levels to address the six dimensions: A: Patient experiences, B: Care-giving microsystems, C: Organizations that house and support care-giving microsystems, and D: Legal, financial, and educational environment (e.g., laws, payment, accreditation, professional training).

[1] Crossing the Quality Chasm defines a microcosm as small groups of people, information system(s), client population, and processes (e.g. a local hospital's night shift Emergency Department staff or a cardiac surgery team).

Third, that they are system-minded or that they look at a patient's care needs as crossing organizational, even competitive, boundaries and that they are not limited to a single experience with a hospital or clinic.

It also outlines ten rules to support meeting these guidelines during a redesign process:[1] Crossing the Quality Chasm recommends six organizational changes to not only fix problems in the existing U.S. health care system but to allow health care organizations to thrive long-term:[1] It also recommends that United States Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) invest resources in making clinical best practices easy to access nationwide and support a health care information system infrastructure that includes "the elimination of most handwritten clinical data by the end of the decade.”[1] Finally, Crossing the Quality Chasm identifies numerous environmental factors, including financing, regulations, accreditation, litigation, workforce education, and social policy.

[1] The report identified numerous barriers to successful health care transformation, including: inconsistent or fluctuating goals, picking measurements that do not align with the goals, gaps caused by leadership turnover, low investment, outdated technology, unsustainable financing, threat of litigation, overregulation, and professional education that focuses on individual services rather than the system perspective.

It also acknowledged that despite improvements, the U.S. health care system needed to continue to change to meet the new framework in Crossing the Quality Chasm.