Health IT Expert Panel I (HITEP-I) 

Final Report: Recommended Common Data Types and Prioritized Performance Measures for Electronic Healthcare Information Systems 

The Opportunity

In its March 2001 report, Crossing the Quality Chasm: A New Health System for the 21^st Century, the Institute of Medicine (IOM) linked automated information management as a fundamental need to achieve a healthcare system that is re-centered to focus on the patient.  Likewise, the healthcare quality community has long recognized that such electronic information systems are a critical factor to provide data for measures of healthcare quality. 

This initial HITEP work focused on envisioning the EHR platform required for performance measurement in the future. The technical and organizational approach described in this report should assist in the transition of quality measurement to electronic health records. The work of the NQF Health IT Expert Panel provides important building blocks, including the common quality data types needed for quality measurement and a new method to assess data quality that should help to move us towards a more rational approach to measure development and endorsement.

Measuring quality is a first step toward improving American healthcare. Currently, however, collecting and reporting accurate, comparative healthcare performance data is complex and largely a time-consuming, manual process. Quality improvement leaders have long recognized that the widespread adoption of Health Information Technology (HIT) will automate and simplify these processes by providing electronic information.^{1, 2, 3} Yet to date, the vast majority of electronic health information readily available for quality measurement have been administrative, claims-based data, which include only limited clinical information.

About the Project

The first Health IT Expert Panel (HITEP) was convened in May and September, 2007. Their recommendations were published in 2008.

Based upon its discussion and deliberations, the Health IT Expert Panel identified three broad gaps and requirements in the quality measurement IT enterprise and suggested seven recommendations to CCHIT, HITSP, Measure Developer Organizations (MDOs), NQF, EHR vendors, and HL7 EHR Technical Committee.

The Panel began by identifying high priority conditions and associated AQA and HQA quality measures. The clinical importance of the health conditions served as the initial lens through which the Panel assessed these measures. The Institute of Medicine (IOM) criteria for prioritization of clinical conditions were applied as a filter to the full list of over 100 AQA and HQA measures.

This work was conducted under a contract from the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality.

Health IT Expert Panel II (HITEP-II) Final Report
Health IT Expert Panel II (HITEP-II) Project

Contact Health IT at 202-783-1300 or via email at info@qualityforum.org.

Notes 

1. National Quality Forum. Information Technology and Healthcare Quality: A National Summit. Washington, DC: NQF; 2003.

2. Corrigan J, Greiner A, and Erickson S. Fostering Rapid Advances in Health Care. Washington, DC: National Academies Press; 2002.

3. National Committee on Vital and Health Statistics. Information for Health: A Strategy for Building the National Health Information Infrastructure. Washington, DC: Department of Health and Human Services; 2001.