NQF Endorses Additional Resource Use Measures 

Washington, DC – the National Quality Forum (NQF) Board of Directors has approved for endorsement four additional measures on healthcare resource use and costs. The measures – focusing on care costs associated with asthma, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, hip/knee replacement, and pneumonia – will provide vital data on how resources are used in these areas of care. Such data will help create a more efficient, less wasteful healthcare system.

Resource use measures as defined by NQF are comparable measures of actual dollars or standardized units of resources applied to the care given to a specific population or event, such as a specific diagnosis or procedure. NQF previously endorsed a first set of resource use measures in January 2012.

“Healthcare spending in the United States continues to rise without any significant gains in patient satisfaction, increased access to care, or higher-quality care,” said Janet Corrigan, PhD, MBA, president and CEO of NQF. “I’m confident that these additional measures – in conjunction with existing resource use measures in our portfolio – will help us better understand what is driving costs and create a more effective, efficient healthcare system.”

These measures were endorsed as part of a larger NQF endorsement project to evaluate how resources are used in care delivery, as a result of keen interest from government and private payers. Several provisions in recent policy require use of resource data over the next several years to support efforts to move toward a value-based purchasing payment model, and private payers have been using these types of measures for several years.

NQF is a voluntary consensus standards-setting organization. Any party may request reconsideration of any of the four endorsed quality measures listed below by submitting an appeal no later than May 1 (to submit an appeal, go to the NQF Measure Database). For an appeal to be considered, the notification must include information clearly demonstrating that the appellant has interests directly and materially affected by the NQF-endorsed recommendations and that the NQF decision has had (or will have) an adverse effect on those interests.

Endorsed Measures: 

• 1560: Relative Resource Use for People with Asthma (National Committee for Quality Assurance)
• 1561: Relative Resource Use for People with COPD (National Committee for Quality Assurance)
• 1609: ETG based hip/knee replacement cost of care (Ingenix)
• 1611: ETG based pneumonia cost of care (Ingenix)

Learn more about the Resource Use endorsement project. 

Read the press release on previous NQF-endorsed resource use measures.  

NQF operates under a three-part mission to improve the quality of American healthcare by:  

• building consensus on national priorities and goals for performance improvement and working in partnership to achieve them;  
• endorsing national consensus standards for measuring and publicly reporting on performance; and 
• promoting the attainment of national goals through education and outreach programs.