Overview

New to The National Quality Forum (NQF) Measure Applications Partnership (MAP) 2021-2022 cycle, NQF convened a MAP Health Equity Advisory Group on behalf of the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) to provide input on the measures under consideration (MUCs) with the goal of reducing health differences closely linked with social determinants of health (SDOH).

The Opportunity

Achieving health equity, eliminating disparities, and improving the health of all groups are commonly held goals across the United States healthcare system. In partnership with the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS), the National Quality Forum (NQF) convened a MAP Health Equity Advisory Group to provide input on the measures under consideration (MUCs) to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) with a lens for measurement issues impacting health disparities and the over 1,000 critical access hospitals in the United States.

About the Project

In this project, the MAP Health Equity Advisory Group, with oversight from the MAP Coordinating Committee, will provide recommendations on issues related to measures that would impact healthcare disparities and critical access hospitals. The MAP Health Equity Advisory Group will participate in web meetings to review the MUC list and provide feedback to be included in the materials reviewed by the setting-specific Workgroups and the Coordinating Committee.

The MAP Health Equity Advisory Group will participate in web meetings to review the MUC list and provide feedback to be included in the materials reviewed by the setting-specific Workgroups and the Coordinating Committee.

Objectives

The MAP Health Equity Advisory Group will help to:

• Provide input to the MAP Clinician, MAP Hospital, and MAP Post-Acute Care/Long-Term Care (PAC/LTC) Workgroups on measurement issues impacting health disparities and critical access hospitals for MUCs during MAP’s annual pre-rulemaking process;
• Identify health disparity gaps in measurement; and
• Provide recommendations to reduce health differences that are closely linked to social determinants of health.

MAP Health Equity Advisory Group members have expertise in health disparities and quality measurement; this includes but is not limited to experience with quality of care related to age, sex, income, race, ethnicity, disability, language, literacy, sexual orientation, gender identity, geographic location, and the intersection of these factors.

Funding

This project is funded by the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS).

Related Work

Learn more about MAP's other workgroups: Coordinating Committee, Clinician Workgroup, Hospital Workgroup, Rural Health Workgroup, and PAC / LTC Workgroup.

Contact Information

For more information, please contact the project team at MAPHealthEquity@qualityforum.org. Thank you for your interest.