Despite the widespread use of quality measures in the past two decades, many areas of health and healthcare still do not have enough or the right kinds of measures to drive improvement. Examples of “gap areas” include palliative and end-of-life care, diagnostic accuracy, behavioral health, and care of people with Alzheimer’s disease or multiple chronic conditions. There are also not enough measures of patient-reported outcomes.

Similar to incubators that nurture entrepreneurs in technology environments, the NQF Measure Incubator® was designed to nurture development of needed measures. The Measure Incubator tested ways to connect groups interested in particular measure concepts with measure development experts, financial and technical resources, and data. In leading the Measure Incubator®, NQF’s role was to facilitate the work of others. NQF itself did not develop measures.

Over a three-year period, with guidance from the Measure Incubator Advisory Council, NQF’s Measure Incubator convened stakeholders to identify and prioritize measure concepts that would fill measurement gaps, and facilitated the development of 11 measures.

Learn more about the NQF Measure Incubator’s past projects.