NQF’s Work to Recommend Measures for Federal Programs is Underway 

Washington, DC –The National Quality Forum’s Measure Applications Partnership (MAP) began its 2016-2017 work to recommend measures for CMS pay-for-performance, public reporting, and other programs in advance of federal rulemaking. The MAP Coordinating Committee overseeing this work is co-chaired by Chip Kahn, MPH, president and chief executive officer of the Federation of American Hospitals, and Harold Pincus, MD, professor and vice chair of psychiatry at Columbia University and director of quality and outcomes research at NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital.

“Measures are essential to improving patient care, but we need to make sure we’re using high-value measures that reflect carefully chosen national priorities for improving healthcare delivery,” said Kahn. “I’m looking forward to helping steer MAP’s ongoing work to make measurement more effective and shine a bright light on areas where we need better measures.”

“MAP will also put greater emphasis on addressing the administrative burden that reporting requirements for measures place on providers,” said Pincus. “To help free providers up to focus on patients, MAP will work to recommend measures that align across federal programs.”

Now in its sixth year, MAP’s annual review of measures for use in federal programs helps ensure that these programs measure important aspects of clinical care for the more than 55 million Americans covered by Medicare. MAP also provides annual measure recommendations to improve the quality of healthcare for the more than 87 million adults and children enrolled in Medicaid, including the nearly 11 million Americans dually enrolled in Medicare and Medicaid.

More than two dozen organizations are represented on the multistakeholder MAP Coordinating Committee, which also includes consumer advocates and federal government liaisons from the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, and the Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology.

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The National Quality Forum leads national collaboration to improve health and healthcare quality through measurement. Learn more at www.qualityforum.org.