NQF Board Supports Federal Funding to Promote HIT Adoption

On Friday, December 19, the NQF Board of Directors issued a statement asserting NQF’s support of Federal funding to promote adoption of health information technology (HIT). NQF regards HIT as “an essential foundation for the improvement of healthcare safety, quality, and affordability.” In its statement, the NQF Board encouraged the President-elect and Congressional leadership to link funding mechanisms for HIT to “specific EHR functional and performance requirements shown to be linked to better health outcomes or more efficient use of services.” Click here to read the full statement.

The Value of NQF-Endorsed Measures

A recent article in Health and Hospital Networks magazine underscores the cost effectiveness and the benefit to consumers offered by stakeholders’ adoption of NQF-endorsed measures. The article sketches a brief history of performance measurement in U.S. healthcare, and encourages hospital board members to advocate for measurement standardization. You can learn more about the rigorous evaluation criteria that NQF uses to assess performance measures here.

Last month, the National Priorities Partnership presented to the nation a set of National Priorities and Goals that the Partnership identified as central to the transformation of America’s healthcare.

NQF is proud to be both a member of the Partnership and the convener of this effort. Read NQF's press release announcing its commitment to the Priorities and Goals.

For more information about the Priorities, please visit the National Priorities Partnership website.

To improve the quality of healthcare through measurement and public reporting NQF has recently endorsed the following:

• Hospital Outcomes and Efficiency - Measures

• Consumer-focused public reporting – Guidelines

• Perinatal Care – Measures

• Outpatient Imaging Efficiency - Measures

• Hospital Emergency Department Care - Measures

The NQF Board of Directors approved a new Intellectual Property Policy at its meeting on October 17, 2008. Implementation of this new policy necessitates some changes in the Measure Stewardship Agreement that NQF enters into with the stewards of measures submitted for endorsement.

Tell us What You Think: Comment and Vote!

NQF-endorsed voluntary consensus standards are widely viewed as the gold standard for measurement of healthcare quality. Votes and comments from our varied and diverse membership are what make NQF endorsement the gold standard. See all projects open for voting and commenting along with all open calls for measures and nominations.

For additional information, visit the Members Only section of the website.

(Not a member? Become one today!)

News from NQF

• NQF Creates New Healthcare Information Technology Department
  
  
• Webcast & Presentations from NQF's Policy Conference