NQF is supporting this important shift in care practices by evaluating and endorsing person- and family-centered care (PFCC) measures, setting standards to help guide patients’ and families’ conversations with clinicians, and supporting the development of measures that assess patient-reported outcomes (PROs).

“Today’s consumers are demanding a greater say in their care and more meaningful dialogues with their clinicians,” said James Merlino, MD, president and chief medical officer of Press Ganey’s strategic consulting division, and former co-chair of NQF’s PFCC Standing Committee, a group of experts that is leading NQF’s PFCC project. “NQF’s work in the area of person- and family-centered care is an important step toward measuring and improving care that truly engages and partners with patients—for better care and better health.”

NQF’s PFCC project is examining measures that promote engagement of patients, families, and caregivers as partners in care in three phases. The first phase looked at experience-with-care measures. Phase 2 focused on clinician- and patient-assessed measures of functional status and outcomes, and the newly launched phase 3 is examining a variety of measures focused on shared decision-making, functional status, and experience of care. The PFCC Standing Committee is scheduled to meet on June 6. 

NQF also is supporting better patient engagement with providers in new work to set national standards for educational tools, called decision aids, which help guide patients’ conversations with clinicians. Funded by the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation, the project also will identify clinical areas where more of these tools are needed and will develop a process for certifying high-quality decision aids. Learn more about this work in an upcoming meeting on June 22 and 23. Read more about NQF’s previous work to improve shared decision-making in hospital settings through the Patient Passport (PDF).

In NQF’s Measure Incubator, PatientsLikeMe is working to develop, test, and facilitate the broader use of new measures that assess patient-reported health status. This work builds on NQF’s proposed pathway for PROs, published in early 2013, and is helping to meet a need for measures that can help prompt provider changes in behavior and better tailor care to individual patients.