NQF will conduct an ad hoc review for the endorsed measures: Percentage of Residents or Patients Who Were Assessed and Appropriately Given the Seasonal Influenza Vaccine [short stay] (Endorsed measure 0680) and Percent of Residents Assessed and Appropriately Given the Pneumococcal Vaccine [short stay] (Endorsed measure 0682). CMS has indicated the desire to expand the care setting of these measures to included nursing homes, and NQF will evaluate these measures in the context of this new setting.
This two-fold project is aimed at establishing national priorities for improving the delivery of behavioral health services, achieving better behavioral health outcomes, and improving the behavioral health of the U.S. population, especially those with mental illness and substance abuse.
This project builds on prior NQF work under the Cancer Quality
Measures Project, and seeks to identify and endorse additional measures
for accountability and quality improvement related to cancer care.
This NQF project seeks to identify and endorse measures that specifically address cardiovascular conditions for public reporting and quality improvement applicable to all settings of care. In addition, NQF-endorsed® cardiovascular consensus standards that were endorsed prior to June 2008 will undergo maintenance review.
This project will be managed in two phases. Phase 1 will address factors that limit care
coordination measurement and quality improvement by producing a report on
critical paths to implementation of such measures. Phase 2 will seek to endorse measures for care coordination, focusing on the three gap areas: transitions across settings and providers, effective care planning to facilitate care, and appropriate and timely follow-up.
NQF coordinates the collection of input from stakeholders about "Common Formats" - a standardized method for healthcare providers to collect and exchange information for any patient safety event.
This effort, focused on efficiency measurement, is organized into two projects that will identify and endorse measures for public reporting and quality improvement that specifically address imaging efficiency, episode-based and per-capita resource use.
This project seeks to identify and endorse measures for public reporting and quality improvement related to resource use and care coordination for hospital outpatient imaging.
The first phase of this resource use measurement project will include research and identification of episode-specific and cost measurement issues through the development of a white paper focused on resource use
measurement and evaluation criteria.
This consensus development project will specifically include evaluation of resource use measures, including per capita and episode-based measures for 13 specific diseases and conditions across two review cycles.
Driven by the Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical
Health (HITECH) Act, the Department of Health and Human Services
requested that NQF convert, or “retool,” 113 NQF-endorsed measures from a
paper-based format to an electronic "eMeasure" format.
Health IT will convene a body of experts to participate in an ‘eMeasure Format Review Panel’ to conduct a transparent and thorough review of the retooled measures.
This NQF project seeks to review and endorse new End Stage Renal Disease measures for quality improvement and public reporting.
The Healthcare Disparities and Cultural Competency Consensus Standards
project seeks to expand on NQF’s previous work where a set of criteria
to evaluate disparities-sensitive measures was identified and 35
disparity-sensitive measures for the ambulatory care setting were
endorsed.
NQF seeks to endorse measures of hospital outcomes that reach outside of the hospital walls. These could include measures of quality of the hospital transition, improvement in health-related quality of life, palliative care symptom control, and surgical outcomes.
The Measure Applications Partnership (MAP) is a public-private partnership convened by the National Quality Forum (NQF). MAP was created for the explicit purpose of providing input to the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) on the selection of performance measures for public reporting and performance-based payment programs.
Questions about MAP? Please review the MAP FAQs for more details on MAP and why MAP is important.
NQF seeks to achieve consensus on a measurement
framework for assessing the efficiency of care—defined as quality and costs—provided to individuals with multiple chronic conditions (MCCs) in order to encourage the development and application of performance measures that address
the complex circumstances of this population.
The Coordinating Committee's report will available for Public and Member Comment in the summer of 2011. NQF members and the public will have the opportunity to comment on the NPP Coordinating Committee’s draft input to HHS.
This project will address the need for oral health performance measures that are applicable to oral health safety net dental programs, the Child Health Insurance Program Reauthorization Act (CHIPRA), the Medicare and Medicaid core measures set, and for use by other implementers. It will build on work by HHS, the Dental Quality Alliance, and others to identify oral health measures throughout the measure pipeline, including measure concepts and recognize where there are gaps in measures and prioritize measures for further development and testing.
NQF seeks to identify and endorse measures for public reporting and quality improvement addressing quality of care for patients receiving palliative care and end-of-life (EOL) care services. In addition, this project will include a review of previously NQF-endorsed® standards relating to palliative care and EOL.
NQF is seeking endorsement of measures for patient safety. Under this project, NQF will identify and endorse cross-cutting patient safety measures across conditions, populations, and settings of care.
This endorsement maintenance project will address complication-related measures. Specific complication-related domains that are scheduled for maintenance include pressure ulcers, falls, medication safety, and venous thromboembolism.
NQF seeks to further define healthcare acquired conditions (HACs), develop an expanded list of HACs relevant to non-hospital settings, and review and update the NQF-endorsed® Serious Reportable Events.
The goal of this project is to address the major methodological and data issues related to the use of patient-reported outcomes in performance measurement and identify the critical path to achieving NQF endorsement.
NQF seeks to endorse processes, structure, and outcome measures specific to pediatric cardiac surgery that are aimed at further reduction of mortality, efficient use of resources, and reduction of morbidities.
This project seeks to identify and endorse measures for public reporting and quality improvement addressing reproductive health, pregnancy, childbirth and post-partum care, and newborn care. In addition, this project will include maintenance of previously NQF-endorsed standards in these topic areas.
This NQF project seeks to identify and endorse preventive health
measures for public reporting and quality improvement that are
applicable to all settings of care. In addition, NQF-endorsed® consensus
standards that were endorsed prior to 2009 will undergo maintenance
review.
In this project, NQF will perform an environmental scan of performance measures and of evaluation tools pertaining to pressure ulcers in all healthcare settings. NQF will also propose a framework that aligns the existing quality measures.
This NQF project seeks to identify and endorse measures that specifically evaluate the quality of care for pulmonary conditions and the critical care setting. In addition, NQF-endorsed® pulmonary and critical care consensus standards that were endorsed prior to December 2009 will undergo maintenance review.
NQF is enhancing the model in response to evolving needs for quality
measurement. Based on the comments submitted, the Quality Data Model (QDM) will be
updated and new versions released as needed.
This project seeks to identify and endorse additional cross-cutting (not condition-specific) measures for accountability and quality improvement that specifically address all-cause readmissions to hospitals. Additionally, as part of this process, all-cause hospital readmissions-related consensus standards that were endorsed by NQF before June 2009 will be evaluated under the maintenance process.
Regionalizing emergency medical care services is one policy option for improving care while making more efficient use of medical resources. Phase I of this project began in June 2010 and encompasses an environmental scan and a commissioned paper.
The NQF Renal Consensus Standards Endorsement Maintenance Project seeks to identify and endorse measures that specifically address renal-related diseases for public reporting and quality improvement applicable to all settings of care. In addition, NQF-endorsed® chronic kidney disease and end stage renal disease consensus standards that were endorsed prior to June 2008 will undergo maintenance review.
NQF has begun an initiative to review results and discuss successes, barriers, and unintended consequences within adverse event reporting at the state level, including use of NQF's Serious Reportable Events. This effort will be guided by a working group of representatives from the 27 states (including the District of Columbia) with medical error reporting.
This NQF project seeks to identify and endorse measures that specifically address care of the surgical patient and surgical procedures for public reporting and quality improvement applicable to all settings of care. In addition, NQF-endorsed® surgical consensus standards that were endorsed prior to June 2008 will undergo maintenance review.
NQF currently uses four criteria to evaluate performance measures,
including Usability, which is
intended to ascertain whether users of a measure—consumers, purchasers,
providers, and policymakers—will be able to understand the results and
find them useful for quality improvement and decision-making.
