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

Vaccine-preventable diseases cause unnecessary illness, morbidity, and mortality. Costs of care associated with vaccine-preventable disease greatly outweigh the costs of vaccination. Unfortunately, adult vaccination coverage remains low for most routinely recommended vaccines and are well below the Healthy People 2020 Objectives. This work will seek to identify critical areas for performance measurement to optimize vaccination rates and outcomes across adult populations. Contact Juliet Feldman at jfeldman@qualityforum.org for more information.

Alzheimer's Disease and Related Dementias

Alzheimer's Disease, the most common of the dementias, affects an estimated 5.2 million Americans, accounts for 60-80 percent of all dementia cases, and is the sixth leading cause of death in the US overall. The economic burden of dementia is high and the emotional and physical burden is immense, not only for the patients, but also for their families and caregivers. This work seeks to develop a path forward for quality and efficiency measurement to improve care and outcomes for patients with dementia. Contact Juliet Feldman at jfeldman@qualityforum.org for more information.

Care Coordination

"Promoting effective communication and coordination of care" is one of NQS' six priorities. Successful care coordination has been associated with higher-quality care, improved efficiency, better patient experience, and reduced costs. This work will seek to understand and recommend performance measurement approaches for the "health neighborhood," a dynamic environment of coordination between providers of primary care and community-based services. Contact Lauralei Dorian at ldorian@qualityforum.org for more information.

Health Workforce

Achieving NQS' aims of better care, affordable care, and healthy people/healthy communities will require an adequate supply and distribution of a well-trained workforce. This work is intended to provide public and private stakeholders, including policymakers, healthcare providers, health systems, and educational institutions with the resources and knowledge to advance performance measurement in the deployment of the healthcare workforce in ways that promote effective prevention and care coordination. Contact Allison Ludwig at aludwig@qualityforum.org for more information.

Person-Centered Care and Outcomes

A multistakeholder group will develop specific recommendations for performance measurement to address person- and family-centered care, including patient-centered communications, shared decisionmaking, the concordance of care plans with patient preferences, values, and goals, and measures based on patient-reported outcomes. The specific goals of this project are to envision ideal person- and family-centered care (not constrained by current care delivery models) as a framework for performance measurement, and to make short- and intermediate-term recommendations to measure performance and progress on ideal person- and family- centered care. Contact Mitra Ghazinour at mghazinour@qualityforum.org for more information.

Related NQF Work

Prioritizing Measurement: Getting to Measures That Matter 

Contact Information

Learn more about the overall Priorities work, you may contact Allison Ludwig at 202-783-1300 or aludwig@qualityforum.org.