Home > About Us > Leadership > President's Report Archive > April 2004
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No significant changes.
Three new persons have joined the NQF staff. As previously reported, we anticipate hiring one or two additional Research Analysts (e.g., Masters degree training with 0-2 years experience) and one Program Directors/Senior Program Directors (e.g., RN, PharmD, PhD, MD plus 5-10 years experience) in the next 2-3 months.
If the applications that are pending Board action are approved, membership will stand at 212 member organizations.
All Councils continue to meet regularly by conference call and/or e-mail.
The Spring Membership Meeting was held on April 28th at the Hilton Logan Airport in Boston, MA. Registration was double that for the 2003 meeting, which we attribute in part to the East Coast location and the fact that it was held in conjunction with the Ambulatory Workgroup meeting.
We have asked Member Council chairs for volunteers to plan the 5th Annual Meeting, to be held October 6-7, 2004, in Washington, DC. The meeting venue will be the Four Seasons Washington, DC (Georgetown), with sleeping rooms available at the Melrose, 3 blocks away, at a rate lower than last year's hotel rooms at the JW Marriott.
On April 7, an all Member conference call was held for Members to discuss the four proposed consensus standards for nursing care performance measures under consideration for a second round of voting. More than 60 Member organizations participated. Ballots were due on April 20.
With Bill Roper's resignation, his seat also needs to be filled; a candidate will be proposed during the Executive Session.
New project funding has come from several sources. We have concluded negotiations with AHRQ, NCI, CMS, and CDC for phase II of the Quality of Care Performance Measures for Cancer project. In February 2004, NQF was awarded a grant from the California Endowment, "Improving the Safety of Use of Prescription Medications," which is further described in the section on programming. We are discussing follow-up work to the "Nursing Care" project and a workshop on substance abuse performance measurement with the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. Tentative approval of funding for a project on performance measures and care for deep venous thrombosis has been received from Aventis.
Serious Reportable Adverse Events in Healthcare: A Consensus Report
Several states are pursuing legislative or administrative action to make
this list of adverse events, all or in part, reportable at the state level. Three of DOD's six TRICARE contractors are collecting these data; all six should be by the end of the year (for care provided in the United States).
Voluntary Consensus Standards for Adult Diabetes Care: 2004 Update
We are still awaiting updated specifications from NCQA and AMA, which are currently attached to the intellectual property issues for the ambulatory care measures. Once specifications are received, we will conduct a second 30-day review of the updated measures with their detailed specifications.
Safe Practices for Better Healthcare
On April 27, 2004, the Leapfrog Group rolled out its fourth "leap," a survey that incorporates the 27 NQF safe practices that were not previously part of their initiative. (Its first three leaps are for three of the NQF-endorsed safe practices.)
National Voluntary Consensus Standards for Hospital Care: An Initial Performance Measure Set
Ten of the endorsed measures are now being publicly reported on the CMS web site as part of a voluntary hospital reporting initiative; subject to the final decision of the Secretary of Health and Human Services, these 10 measures must be reported by September 2005 in order for facilities to receive maximum payment from the government. In early 2005, the intent is to include an additional 12 measures from the
NQF-endorsed set, as well as H-CAHPS.
National Voluntary Consensus Standards for Nursing Home Care
CMS has aligned its Nursing Home Compare web site with all voluntary consensus standards approved by the Board in September 2003 and will add the "weight loss" measure endorsed in January 2004 in the coming months. Nurse staffing hours, which also was endorsed in January 2004, is already posted. A printed report will be released on April 29, 2004.
Consumer-Focused Mammography Center Quality Measures
A draft of recommended consumer-focused measures of mammography screening that merit further testing in a Robert Wood Johnson Foundation pilot test was posted for review and comment by NQF members. The comment period closed Wednesday, January 28, 2004. The document is now undergoing editing for final publication.
National Voluntary Consensus Standards for Nursing-Sensitive Care Performance Measurement
Voting on the four proposed consensus standards on the ballot for a second round of voting concluded on April 20, 2004. As noted above, prior to the close of balloting, an all-Member conference call was held to discuss the proposed consensus standards. The Board of Directors will review and act on the results of the second round of balloting at its meeting on April 29, 2004. RWJF, which funded this effort, has expressed interest in follow-on dissemination and implementation-related activity.
Home Health Performance Measures
The project will hold its first Steering Committee meeting on May 25th at the Key Bridge Marriott in Arlington, VA. The meeting will be open to Members only. The Steering Committee's second meeting will be held on July 20-21, at the Ritz Carlton, Washington, DC. (This venue was the lowest price of three bids.) The project is funded by CMS through a subcontract with the Delmarva Medical Care Foundation.
Cardiac Surgery Performance Measures
The first meeting of the "Standardizing Cardiac Surgery Measures" Steering Committee was held in Washington, DC on February 9, 2004. The Technical Advisory Panel has convened by teleconference to begin reviewing meetings, and the Steering Committee's final meeting will be on June 2-3 at the Washington Marriott. The project is funded, in part, by the Department of Veterans Affairs, Guidant Foundation, and Society for Thoracic Surgery.
Child Healthcare Quality
An invitational workshop bringing together NQF members and other child healthcare quality measurement experts was held on January 8, 2004. Proceedings from the workshop are being completed and are available in the Board's meeting book. The workshop was funded, in part, by the March of Dimes and National Association of Children's Hospitals and Related Institutions.
Behavioral Health
An invitational workshop to explore the dimensions of a project on reaching consensus on a set of performance measures for quality of behavioral health care has been scheduled for June 29 at George Washington University. The workshop is supported in part by Potomac
Ridge Behavioral Health System/Adventist HealthCare and the Department of Veterans Affairs.
Cancer Care Quality Measures
Negotiations with AHRQ, NCI, CDC, and CMS concluded on April 24, and we are currently awaiting the final paperwork. A project coordinator has been identified and is ready to start.
Patient Safety Taxonomy
The Steering Committee has been appointed and the call for taxonomies is under way. The Committee's first meeting will be held on May 20 at the Grand Hyatt in Washington, DC. Funding for this project has been provided, in part, by AHRQ and the California HealthCare Foundation.
Ambulatory Care Quality Measures
More than 100 NQF members from 53 organizations will participate in
Workgroup meetings in Boston on April 27. The focus of these meetings is to begin prioritizing areas that should be targeted for endorsement of consensus standards. If needed, a second Workgroup meeting will be held in Washington, DC, in June 2004. This project is funded by RWJF. Related to this project, CMS has asked NQF to consider its Doctor Office Quality (DOQ) measures under expedited consensus.
Cybermedical Security Initiative
At the request of the US Department of Veterans Affairs, a workgroup was convened to explore safety and security issues in networked medical devices. In-kind support has been provided by BoozAllenHamilton. Final recommendations from the working group are pending.
Informed Consent and Patient Safety
This project, funded by the Commonwealth Fund, will explore the implementation of the NQF-endorsed "safe practice" (#10) relating to informed consent for low literacy/limited English proficient patients. The Technical Advisory Panel has been appointed and has convened once by conference call. The three "early adopter" collaborating partners have been identified, and their self-assessment of implementation of Safe Practice 10 will soon begin, which will be followed by site visits. The workshop to discuss the case studies, results of interviews of non-adopters, and draft user's guide for implementation has been scheduled for September 10, 2004, in Washington, DC.
Academic Health Centers Performance Measures
In addition to Columbia University, interest in this effort to establish performance measures for academic health centers that recognize their special role as teaching and research institutions, as well as disproportionate share providers often, has been expressed by Johns Hopkins, Yale, Harvard, UNC, Michigan, UCLA, UCD and the University of British Columbia. An initial planning meeting is scheduled for May 13th in New York at Columbia.
National Commission for Quality Long-Term Care
A contract has been executed. The majority of Commission members have been identified. An announcement on the establishment of the Commission, including appointments, will be forthcoming in the coming weeks.
Improving Safe Use of Prescription Medications
This project, funded by the California Endowment, will establish a "safe medication use framework" aimed at increasing the effectiveness of prescription medication use by consumers, focusing especially on low-literacy and limited English proficiency populations. The project will make recommendations about the feasibility and appropriateness of establishing evidence-based safe medication use practices, but will not endorse specific practices per se.
Hospital Governance and Quality Improvement
An invitational workshop on hospital governance and quality improvement aimed at defining the role of Boards of Trustees in overseeing hospital quality improvement efforts was held on March 30, 2004, with in-kind support from the Trustee Institute and Ropes and Gray.
Standardizing Credentialing for Independent Licensed Practitioners
Efforts to identify funding for this project continue.
Projects in Development
In response to a request from RWJF, NQF recently submitted a proposal to convene a workshop to identify a potential framework for assessing the quality of substance abuse treatment. Separately, the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Administration has asked NQF to undertake expedited consensus for two performance measures for substance abuse treatment. The Department of Veterans Affairs has asked NQF to begin consideration of quality of care for HIV/AIDS. We have also been approached about projects focused on needlestick safety, performance measures for depression, and clinical laboratory quality improvement.
An active outreach effort continues.
The Advisory Committee on Implementation Strategy and Priorities met by conference call on March 19th to consider the comments by NQF Members on its draft implementation priorities. A further meeting is needed to finalize recommendations to the Board. A draft report is provided in the Board book.
The Advisory Committee on Data Integrity and Availability continues to meet by conference call to discuss its report on "best practices". It anticipates an in-person meeting in Summer 2004.
Nominations for the third round of John M. Eisenberg Patient Safety andQuality Awards are being accepted through May 27, 2004.