Measuring Performance
 

Prioritizing Measures 


Multistakeholder Input on Priority Setting for Health Care Performance Measurement

Getting to Measures That Matter

Over the past decade, the National Quality Forum (NQF) has endorsed more than 700 healthcare performance measures addressing many important areas of health and healthcare. With the development of the National Quality Strategy (NQS)—a national blueprint for achieving a high value healthcare system—a framework is now in place to assess gaps in quality and efficiency measures. Despite notable progress in getting to measures that matter, a deliberate prioritization of measures is necessary to close critical gaps in measurement. With limited resources to dedicate to measure development and endorsement, decision makers—including policy makers and measure developers—need specific and actionable recommendations on how to most effectively target their resources to create measures that will drive improvement.

Under contract with HHS, NQF will provide multistakeholder guidance on priorities for performance measure development and endorsement to address the triple aim of the NQS by focusing on five content areas. These areas reflect important aspects of health and healthcare that have been repeatedly identified as needing more substantial performance measurement.

The five content areas include:

  • Adult Immunization
    Focused on identifying critical areas for performance measurement to optimize vaccination rates and outcomes across adult populations

  • Alzheimer's Disease and Related Dementias
    Targeting a high-impact condition with complex medical and social implications that impact patients, their family members, and their caregivers

  • Care Coordination
    Focused on the dynamics of coordination and team-based care between providers of primary care and community-based services in the context of the "health neighborhood"

  • Health Workforce
    Emphasizing the role of the workforce in prevention and care coordination, linkages between healthcare and community-based services, and workforce deployment

  • Person-Centered Care and Outcomes
    Considering measures that are most important to patients—particularly patient-reported outcomes—and opportunities to advance them through the use of health information technology