Final Report: National Voluntary Consensus Standards for Health Information Technology: Structural Measures 2008
Ad Hoc Review: An endorsed measure from this project - #0493, Participation in Systematic Clinical Database Registry - was under review. Learn more.
The Opportunity
Interoperable health IT will be required to achieve high quality, patient-centered care. Evidence suggests that important structural processes, such as physician office and workflow redesign, optimize the impact of HIT on reducing medical errors, reporting quality and performance measurements, advancing patient education, and enhancing communication among care providers.
Adoption of health IT by clinicians has been shown to reduce medical errors by increasing access to information thereby improving response times to abnormal results, eliminating repetitive testing and providing clinical decision-support tools to facilitate evidence-based care.
Evidence has shown a decrease in medication errors by up to 20 percent and a decrease in per admission costs by more than 12 percent when clinicians use HIT.
About the Project
This project ended in August 2008.
Objectives
In this project, NQF endorsed nine health IT measures in the areas of electronic prescribing, electronic health record interoperability, care management, quality registries, and the medical home. Measures were endorsed in pairs for each category above to encourage adoption by providers new to health IT and so called “early adopters.” These Health IT structural measures are intended to encourage providers to adopt and effectively use quality-improving technologies.
Process
Candidate measures were considered for NQF endorsement as national voluntary consensus standards. Agreement was developed through NQF’s Consensus Development Process (CDP, version 1.8). This project involved the active participation of representatives from across the spectrum of healthcare stakeholders and was guided by a steering committee.
Funding
Funding for this project was provided by the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services.
Contact Information
For questions or more information, contact Health IT at 202-783-1300 or via email at HealthIT@qualityforum.org.
This project endorsed nine measures for public accountability and quality improvement to assess and encourage health IT adoption by clinicians.
NQF staff notified Members and the general public of the upcoming Call for Intent to Submit Candidate Standards for this project.
The project Steering Committee, representing the full range of stakeholder perspectives, was formed following the process set forth in NQF’s Consensus Development Process. A technical advisory panel was also formed to provide additional expertise on this project.
NQF received measures to review for potential endorsement as national voluntary consensus standards.
The Steering Committee met in person and by conference call numerous times in March and April. The steering committee reviewed all submissions and communicated with measure developers as needed to determine the measures to recommend for endorsement. Eighteen measures were considered and nine were recommended for endorsement by the Steering Committee. Following this review period, the nine recommended measures were made available for public and member comment.
For the member voting period nine measures were presented in the draft report that was revised to reflect public and member comments.
View Voting Draft
The CSAC decided to endorse nine structural measures for health IT.
The Board of Directors ratified the CSAC’s decision to endorse nine structural measures for health IT.
The public had 30 days to appeal the decision to endorse a voluntary consensus standard. No appeals were submitted on the endorsement of these measures.
