Home > About Us > Leadership > President's Report Archive > November 2001
Click here to login to the members area.
The relocation of the NQF's office from temporary quarters on Connecticut Avenue to long-term lease space at 601 13th Street, NW, Suite 500 North, was concluded with the delivery of items held in storage on November 2, 2001. "Moving in" continues.
No changes since September.
On September 6-7, 2001, the NQF held its second Annual Meeting in Washington, DC. Approximately 200 individuals attended and, overall, feedback about the meeting was quite positive. Since that meeting, the Provider and Health Plan Council and the Research and Quality Improvement Council have held conference calls and exchanged e-mails regarding the Serious Reportable Adverse Events report and the NQF consensus process. Their comments will be discussed at this meeting.
With the seven members approved at the Annual Meeting and the four applications currently pending, the NQF organizational membership will stand at 137.
The NQF continues to operate within budget. Preliminary discussions have been held with the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation about renewal of its current grant for core support.
The NQF has submitted an application to the Nathan Cummings Foundation to explore development of voluntary consensus standards for end-of-life care for children. See program updates for additional information on other project-specific funding.
Serious Reportable Adverse Events
The Board approved the report, Serious Reportable Adverse Events, but agreed to consider various last minute comments and possible changes at the November 29, 2001, meeting.
Hospital Performance Measures
The third meeting of the "Hospitals" Steering Committee was held in Dearborn, MI, on October 24, 2001. The third meeting reviewed candidate measures for the initial core set, as well as the recommendations of the working groups. The Steering Committee is on target to recommend an initial set in early 2002. Of note, several observers attending the meeting complimented the NQF for having the meeting outside of the DC; they noted small local groups cannot afford to travel to the NQF's Washington, DC, meetings, and these type of "field" meetings were appreciated. The Michigan Health and Hospitals Association, in particular, expressed its appreciation for the NQF's efforts to broaden its meeting venues.
Hospital Performance Measures for Children
Early in 2001, NQF submitted a LOI to the David and Lucile Packard Foundation for a workshop to explore hospital performance measures for children. Although the foundation invited a full proposal from the NQF after reviewing an LOI, the Packard Foundation decided against funding the project at this time due to diminished grant funds from earnings on its stock.
Safe Practices
The third meeting of the "Safe Practices" Steering Committee was held on October 29, 2001, in Bethesda, MD. The Steering Committee reviewed the expanded list of potential practices (i.e., a list that went beyond the list of 73 practices rated by the UCSF-Stanford Evidence-based Practice Center) and agreed to convene for a fourth meeting in December to further refine its criteria, categorization, and rating of the practices.
IT Summit
The project Steering Committee conferred twice by conference call to further plan the summit, identify the papers, and refine the focus of the project, which is a joint effort of the NQF and Institute of Medicine. Conference space is being held for March 6-7, 2002, at the Institute of Medicine. To date, the NQF has received funds or pledges of funds from Kaiser Permanente, the Veterans Health Administration, the U.S. Army Medical Research and Materiel Command, and CMS; support from the CDC may be forthcoming. Other support is being provided by the IOM, Markle Foundation, and National Committee on Health and Vital Statistics. Raising funds from the private sector continues to be difficult. A vision statement for the summit was finalized; a copy has been included in the Board's briefing materials. This statement also has been posted on the NQF web site.
Nursing Homes
A project Steering Committee was appointed in early October when the NQF was given authorization to proceed with the project. Two conference calls were held in late October, and one in-person meeting was convened on November 12, 2001, in Arlington, VA. The Steering Committee made recommendations on 11 nursing home quality measures that the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid (CMS) should include in its 5-state pilot project on public reporting. These measures and other CMS initiatives related to nursing homes were announced on November 19, 2001, at a media event in which I participated, along with NQF Board members John Rother and Bill Golden. Of note, NQF has conducted all work to date without a formal subcontract/contract from Abt/CMS, despite repeated attempts by the NQF to finalize such. We have notified both Abt and CMS that we will cease working in the near future if the situation is not resolved.
Cancer
Since spring 2000, we have been holding discussions with the National Cancer Institute about a project for quality-related measures for cancer care. In September 2001, the NCI transferred funds to AHRQ for a contract modification to fund a first meeting of a project Steering Committee (~$187,000); a full project awaits additional funds from NCI and other parties (~$1.2 million, total). During October and September, we exchanged a draft statement of work, and we anticipate finalizing the contract modification in December 2001. As noted in previous reports, it is our impression that NCI intends to pursue cancer quality measures for 2 to 4 tissue types and/or cross-cutting areas (e.g., pain management or palliative care).
National Quality Measures Clearinghouse
Keystone Peer Review Organization (KePRO), the NQF, Oracle, and IBM submitted a proposal in response to an AHRQ RFP to establish a National Quality Measures Clearinghouse, which also would have incorporated the National Guidelines Clearinghouse in the future. AHRQ recently announced it had awarded the contract to a consortium of ECRI, Harvard School of Public Health, SAIC, and TranTech, Inc.
Standardized Storytelling
With Paul B. Batalden, MD and William B. Weeks, MD, MBA, both of Dartmouth Medical School and the Department of Veteran Affairs' Patient Safety Center of Inquiry at White River Junction, the NQF submitted a proposal to AHRQ in response to their RFP for patient safety cooperative agreements. The proposed 27-month project would assess whether "standardized storytelling" about healthcare errors and iatrogenic injuries would enhance provider education and facilitate the development of a healthcare culture of patient safety, as reflected by the frequency of error reporting, the quality of adverse event reports and root cause analyses, implementation of policies and procedures to promote patient safety, and an organization's attitudes about reporting. In late September we received informal notification that the grant was rated favorably, but did not receive a priority score that placed it among those receiving funds. Comments by the reviewers should be easily addressed, and we intend to re-submit the proposal in the next cycle.
Diabetes Consensus Measures
The Program Committee held a conference call on November 4, 2001, and concurred with moving forward to seek consensus on the Performance Measurement Coordinating Committee's Recommended Measures for Diabetes Care in Adults via an expedited process. We will be launching that effort shortly.
Payment Policy and Quality
Discussions continue with a prominent foundation to sponsor a workshop that would explore the current relationship of payment and healthcare quality and that would make possible evidence-based changes in payment policies that would better incentivize and reward healthcare quality improvement, while not increasing overall expenditures or decreasing access to care.
Standardizing Credentialing for ILPs
NQF, JCAHO, and NCQA have agreed to jointly sponsor a workshop in early 2002 to explore a standardized approach to the credentialing of physicians and other independent licensed practitioners. Planning is proceeding.
Clinical Preventive Services
Initial discussion has been held with the Partnership for Prevention (PfP) about how the NQF might be helpful in encouraging employers and health plans to cover the PfP's identified high-value clinical preventive services and otherwise increase the delivery of these services.
Other
Discussion continues with a variety of other entities about potential programmatic activities.
NQF has continued to pursue an aggressive outreach effort through speeches, media interviews, and other venues.
The Strategic Advisory Council has been constituted with Don Berwick as the chair. All but one of the SFB members elected to remain on the Council. Three new persons have been added to its membership: Nancy-Ann DeParle, Arnold Milstein, and Risa Lavizzo-Mourey.
The NQF participated in a working group, along with Chris Queram of the Alliance, Bruce Bradley, and several large employers, to discuss "Synchronizing National Health Care Purchasers." Three meetings were held in August (Dearborn, MI), September (Minneapolis, MN), and November (Washington, DC). Two primary projects are being examined by a follow-on group, which will be purchaser and consumer driven: