Expert Panel Report: Driving Quality and Performance Measurement—A Foundation for Clinical Decision Support
The Opportunity
To improve healthcare quality, safety, and effectiveness, relevant clinical knowledge represented within quality measures and guidelines of care must be evident at the point of care and implemented in a manner that promotes optimal care. Properly positioned, clinical decision support (CDS) tools can play an important role in matching patient information with relevant clinical knowledge to help users incorporate that knowledge into decisionmaking.
Decision support can be broadly defined as any tool or technique that enhances decisionmaking by clinicians, patients, and/or their surrogates in the delivery or management of health and healthcare. CDS is an essential capability of health IT systems; however, a common classification of information that connects quality improvement information and CDS is needed.
About the Project
In November 2009, the National Quality Forum (NQF) convened the CDS Expert Panel to develop the NQF CDS Taxonomy, a classification of the information that connects quality
measurement and CDS in clinical information systems.
Process
The Clinical Decision Support project was not a consensus development project, and did not follow NQF's Consensus Development Process. Rather, the project was guided by an Expert Panel with expertise in CDS, performance measurement.
Project Funding
This project was partially funded under NQF's contract with the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.
Related NQF Work
Contact Information
For questions or more information, contact Health IT at 202-783-1300 or via email at HealthIT@qualityforum.org.
NQF will convene a panel of experts in clinical decision support (CDS), performance measurement, and electronic health records (EHRs) to provide advice on how best to coordinate among CDS, EHR, and performance measure implementation.
NQF issued a call for nominations for the Clinical Decision Support Expert Panel. The 16 members of the panel represent a range of experts on clinical decision support.
Expert Panel Roster (PDF)
Expert Panel Biographies (PDF)
For additional information on the Expert Panel formation process, including specific information on conflicts of interest and required time commitment, please refer to the Call for Nominations documents.
Call for Nominations (Word)
The Expert Panel will have one in-person meeting and subsequent conference calls to achieve its objectives:
- Develop a framework to extend the QDS to enable CDS; and
- Develop an approach to measurement of effective use of CDS.
The Clinical Decision Support Expert Panel met November 11-12, 2009.
The Expert Panel met via conference call on March 11, 2010 to discuss the proposed Clinical Decision Support Taxonomy.
Agenda (PDF)
Meeting Summary (PDF)
On April 12, 2010, the Expert Panel met via conference call to discuss a proposal to map the CDS Taxonomy to the Quality Data Set (QDS) model. The Expert Panel agreed to this approach. The outcome of the mapping can be found in the draft report.
Agenda (PDF)
Meeting Recording (MP3)
