Measure Evaluation Criteria

Performance measures are endorsed as national voluntary consensus standards through NQF’s consensus development process .  The evaluation criteria used to evaluate measures are an important part of the consensus development process and ensure that NQF endorsement remains the gold standard for measuring healthcare quality.  Resources and detailed information about the process NQF follows to evaluate measures can be found on this page.

Measures submitted to NQF are evaluated by a project Steering Committee and technical experts , NQF membership, the NQF Consensus Standards Approval Committee (CSAC), and the NQF Board of Directors .

For consideration by NQF, measures must meet the following conditions:

• Be in the public domain or have a signed intellectual property agreement to make open source¹;
• have an identified responsible entity and process to maintain and update the measure²;
• be intended for both public reporting and quality improvement; and
• be fully developed and tested so that all the evaluation criteria have been addressed and information needed to evaluate the measure is provided.³

Measures that meet these conditions and are determined to be in scope for a current NQF project are evaluated against the following recently updated criteria:

Importance to Measure and Report

• Extent to which the specific measure focus is important to making significant gains in health care quality (safety, timeliness, effectiveness, efficiency, equity, patient-centeredness) and improving health outcomes for a specific high impact aspect of healthcare where there is variation in or overall poor performance.  Candidate measures must be judged to be important to measure and report in order to be evaluated against the remaining criteria.

Scientific Acceptability of Measure Properties

• Extent to which the measure, as specified, produces consistent (reliable) and credible (valid) results about the quality of care when implemented.  

Usability

• Extent to which intended audiences (e.g., consumers, purchasers, providers, policy makers) can understand the results of the measure and are likely to find them useful for decision making.

Feasibility  

• Extent to which the required data are readily available, retrievable without undue burden, and can be implemented for performance measurement.

More information on NQF’s recently updated measure evaluation criteria:

• Compare the prior evaluation criteria to the newly updated version in a side-by-side chart
• Download a PDF of the updated measure evaluation criteria
• Access a complete report detailing the recent measure evaluation update.

Submitting measures
Before submitting measures for consideration for NQF endorsement, measure developers should review the revised measure evaluation criteria.

Resources for submission of measures to NQF:

• Please view our home page for current ‘calls for measures’
• Measure Submission Form, Version 3.0
• Sample Measure Submission Form, Version 3.0 (coming soon)
• NQF Measure Maintenance Policy
• NQF Time-Limited Endorsement Policy

Resources for NQF Member Organizations:

In addition to consulting NQF’s measure evaluation criteria, there are a variety of resources NQF member organizations can use prior to voting for measures proposed for endorsement:

• Review comments that have been submitted by other NQF member organizations, including those within your council during the review and comment period.
• Review the draft voting report, which will include any issues particularly relevant to specific stakeholder groups.
• Consult your council chair or staff liaison for further information about issues specific to your council that should be taken into consideration when voting on measures.

¹NQF requires any organization submitting a measure for endorsement to execute an intellectual property agreement that addresses disclosure of the measure’s proprietary components, including but not limited to specifications, risk adjustment methodologies, data collection instrument, data collection or analysis software, and database access.  For details, please visit http://www.qualityforum.org/pdf/proprietary_policy.pdf

² NQF requires any measure considered for endorsement to have an identified responsible entity and process to maintain and update the measure on a schedule commensurate with clinical innovation, but at least every 3 years.

³Measures that have not been tested are only potentially eligible for a time-limited endorsement and in that case, measure owners must verify that testing will be completed within 24 months of endorsement.