A recently released report by the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Health, and published in JAMA, found hospitals that participated in Medicare's quality improvement organizations were no more likely to show improvement on 15 quality measures than hospitals without QIO programs. The report was staunchly criticized by the American Health Quality Association, which represents the QIO network, saying its evaluation was skewed as it reviewed only 17 months of the 36-month work period and that QIO funding is now at $400 million annually compared with about $200 million when it was studied. The study looked at quality indicators for the treatment of atrial fibrillation, acute myocardial infarction, heart failure, pneumonia and stroke in five states and the District of Columbia. Researchers claimed they found no statistical differences in 14 of 15 quality indicators comparing hospitals that worked with QIO against those that did not.