Statement From National Quality Forum Board of Directors Members At Large 

For over 20 years, the National Quality Forum (NQF) has served a vital, groundbreaking role in our nation’s healthcare ecosystem. NQF’s unique approach to forging consensus across payers, purchasers, providers, patients and other key stakeholders has made commonplace what was once deemed beyond reach – to measure the quality of care. NQF’s hard-earned trust has built a national portfolio of quality measures grounded in science and fit for the purpose of performance-based payment, reporting and accountability. NQF is more than a corporation or a contractor, it is a pioneering movement with successes emulated throughout the world.

Against this backdrop, we are deeply dismayed that CMS has selected a different organization to endorse and consider measures for federal programs. NQF has uniquely served as the safe place where sometimes-oppositional stakeholders with strongly held, differing viewpoints come together to collaborate on shared priorities that have high stakes consequences. When so much in this country’s healthcare can feel broken, NQF stands out as a bright spot other countries aspire to model.

NQF’s expertise and work cannot be easily duplicated nor replaced. In the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, our nation’s healthcare system needs to rebuild its capacity to improve quality and safety. Our country cannot afford to lose its trusted convener to make forward progress. To attempt to do so at a time when our nation’s healthcare system must address multiple crises while simultaneously improving quality, affordability, equity, and outcomes is deeply concerning.

As a multistakeholder Board, we embody the diverse perspectives whose competing viewpoints must be balanced to reach consensus. Our predecessors chartered NQF in a model that has created the standard for what it means to be a consensus-based entity guiding healthcare quality improvement – a charge we dutifully champion.

The health and healthcare challenges our nation faces are felt beyond the federal government to every community, every corner of the private sector, and by everyone who touches the healthcare system. Improving the care with effective measures requires vision, collaboration, and consensus. That is the work we and NQF will continue to champion.

National Quality Forum Board of Directors, Members At Large:

• Leah Binder, MA, MGA
• Andrew Bindman, MD
• John Bulger, DO, MBA
• Susan B. Frampton, Ph.D., FPCC
• Garth Graham, MD, MPH, FACP, FACC
• Tochi Iroku-Malize, MD, MPH, MBA, FAAFP, SFHM
• Jennifer E. Lee, Ph.D., MPH
• Suzanne Miyamoto, RN, PhD, FAAN
• Shannon Connor Phillips, MD, MPH
• Mona Siddiqui, MD, MPH, MSE
• Jamila Taylor, Ph.D., MPA
• Adam Thompson, MPH
• Henry H. Ting, MD, MBA
• Cristie Upshaw Travis, MSHA
• Knitasha V. Washington, FACHE