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National Voluntary Consensus Standards for Prevention and Care
of Venous Thromboembolism (VTE)
Venous thromboembolism (VTE), which encompasses deep vein thrombosis (DVT) and
pulmonary embolism (PE), is the most common preventable cause of hospital death.
Recent estimates show that over 900,000 Americans suffer VTE each year, with
about 400,000 of these being DVT and 500,000 being manifest as PE...More
National Voluntary Consensus Standards for the Reporting of Therapeutic
Drug Management Quality
Advances in pharmaceutical science and technology are among the
most important achievements of modern healthcare. Large numbers of patients
have improved quality of life, and hundreds of thousands of patients with
previously fatal diseases now experience transient acute illnesses or live
with chronic conditions...More
Home Health Care Patient Experience of Care Measures
There has been growing recognition of the importance of home health
in the continuum of care, especially among those with chronic, co-morbid
illnesses. While there has been a growing movement towards quality measurement
in home health care, the voice of the patient has been absent. A measure
of the patient experience of care in home health care is needed to fully
understand the quality of home health care in America. More
National Voluntary Consensus Standards for Hospital Care: Specialty
Clinician Performance Measures
Despite the expanding list of NQF-endorsed™ consensus standards assessing
the quality of hospital care, there are critical aspects of hospital care
not being addressed. Various stakeholders have recognized a need to fill
in the gaps of hospital-based measure sets, particularly in the area of
specialty clinician (physician and other licensed independent practitioners)
hospital care. More
Identifying Opportunities to Improve Transparency and Quality in
Laboratory Medicine
Until recently lab quality management programs have focused primarily
on test utilization and technical quality assurance. However, in recent
years, performance measurement has moved to assessing the quality of laboratory
medicine across the spectrum of activities including the pre-analytic phase–
procedures from the time the test was ordered until analyzed (e.g., proper
test ordered by provider, labeling, or specimen transportation), analytic
phase – the analysis of the specimen by automated, semi-automated or manual
means; and, post-analytic – all procedures from the time a result was produced
in the laboratory to provider interpretation and use... More
National Framework and Preferred Practices for Palliative and Hospice Care
Over the past few years, demand for hospice and palliative care services has grown tremendously. This project will endorse a national consensus framework for discussing and evaluating palliative and hospice care...More
National Voluntary Consensus Standards for Hospital Care: Two Additional Priority Areas, 2005
In 2002-2003, NQF endorsed an initial set of 39 measures in eight priority areas. This project is being undertaken at the request of the CMS in order to supplement that set with measures in two additional priority areas: coordination of care and mortality (acute myocardial infarction, heart failure, and pneumonia)...More
Standardizing a Patient Safety Taxonomy
Although efforts to identify and report information related to patient safety have multiplied, the healthcare system still has no standardized framework for classifying the data that would enable comparisons and analyses of data from across the many public and private reporting systems...More
Hospital CAHPS®
Standardized measurement and reporting of the quality of hospital services from the patients’ perspectives is a high priority. The Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) and the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) have developed a standardized consumer survey tool-HCAHPS®-that can be used by hospitals...More
Pay for Performance Programs: Guiding Principles and Design Strategies - A National Summit
Currently, the prevailing methods of paying for healthcare in the United States neither incent nor reward providing high quality care. The soaring costs of healthcare, coupled with an increasing knowledge of the extent of poor quality care, have made clear the need for a major transformation...More
Evidence-based Substance Abuse Treatment Practices - Workshop
Over the past 15 years, scientific knowledge of effective, evidence-based therapies to treat substance use disorders has increased substantially. As with other aspects of healthcare, the increase in scientific knowledge has not necessarily been accompanied by consistent implementation of proven methods of treatment...More
Voluntary Consensus Standards for Home Health Care
More than 7 million Americans receive care in their homes each year at a cost of more than $36 billion. Home health care services are delivered at home to patients who are recovering from care in hospitals or nursing homes...More
Improving Patient Safety in Medication Use - Special Emphasis for Limited English Proficiency (LEP) and Low Literacy Populations
Patients' compliance with medication use is a significant problem that can lead to short or long-term disability or death. One study found a 76% discrepancy between what medicines patients were prescribed and what medicines (prescription and non-prescription) were actually taken...More
Improving Patient Safety through Informed Consent for Patients with Limited Health Literacy
This project investigated the barriers to, and strategies for, successfully implementing the NQF-endorsed™ Safe Practice #10, "ask each patient or legal surrogate to recount what he or she has been told during the informed consent discussion"...More
Behavioral Healthcare Performance Measures Throughout Healthcare—Workshop
Mental illness and substance use disorders afflict patients in all clinical care settings. To date, efforts to develop and implement performance measures for behavioral healthcare have been separate from performance measurement efforts in general healthcare...More
Voluntary Consensus Standards for Cardiac Surgery
Heart disease is the leading cause of death and disability in the United States and one of the 20 healthcare quality improvement priorities that the Institute of Medicine has recommended for focused national attention...More
ACE Inhibitors vs. ARBs Performance Measure - Workshop
In 2002, NQF endorsed two measures, developed jointly by JCAHO and CMS, addressing use of angiotensin converting enzyme (ACE) inhibitor drugs for patients with left ventricular systolic dysfunction complicating acute coronary syndrome and heart failure...More
National Voluntary Consensus Standards for Ambulatory Care Quality Measurement and Reporting - Phase I
The ambulatory care setting (outpatient care) is the principal venue for delivering medical care across the continuum from primary care to end of life care. Measuring and reporting the quality of outpatient services have become a focus in the healthcare industry...More
Hospital Governing Boards and Quality of Care: A Call to Responsibility
It is well established that hospital governing boards (e.g., boards of trustees) have responsibility for the quality of care provided in the institutions they govern. However, hospital boards have been generally viewed as being rather passive in their approach to quality improvement...More
Consumer Focused Measures of Mammography Center Quality
Mammography is a service that is widely used and for which consumers often have a choice of providers, as well as considerable interest in quality of care. This project will identify candidate measures of mammography center quality...More
National Priorities for Healthcare Quality Measurement and Reporting
This report builds on the Institute of Medicine’s 2003 report, Priority Areas for National Action: Transforming Health Care Quality, and presents the 23 NQF-endorsed™ priorities for healthcare quality measurement and reporting across the continuum of care...More
Voluntary Consensus Standards for Nursing-Sensitive Performance Measurement
Nursing care is critical to the quality of patient care and the success of any healthcare delivery system. This project identified a framework for how to measure nursing care performance, with particular attention to the performance of nurses as teams...More
Child Health Quality Measurement and Reporting Workshop
To date, there are relatively few NQF-endorsed performance measures that address the care settings, health conditions, and/or healthcare needs of particular importance to children...More
Voluntary Consensus Standards for Nursing Home Care
Ongoing concern about the quality of care provided to residents of chronic and post-acute care nursing facilities demands effective methods for measuring and reporting the quality of care...More
Information Management and Healthcare Quality - A National Summit
NQF convened, along with the Institute of Medicine, a National Summit on Information Technology and Healthcare Quality in March 2002. This program focused on the state of the nation’s health information infrastructure...More
Reaching the Tipping Point: Measuring and Reporting Quality Using the NQF-Endorsed™ Hospital Care Measures - Proceedings of a National Summit
Together with the National Health Care Purchasing Institute (NHCPI) and support from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, NQF convened an invitation-only workshop of hospital decision-makers, purchasers, and consumers to address the question, "What would be required to get the NQF-endorsed™ performance measures implemented and the results disclosed?"...More
National Voluntary Consensus Standards for Hospital Care: An Initial Performance Measure Set
While the growing interest in quality measures for hospitals increases the possibilities for measuring and improving hospital quality, it also increases the potential for misdirected or redundant activities, conflicting demands by different interests, and confusion about relevant measures...More
A Comprehensive Framework for Hospital Care Performance Evaluation
This report, developed as part of the NQF project on national voluntary consensus standards for hospital care, established a comprehensive framework and standardized process for hospital quality measurement and reporting, including identifying where research is needed to develop appropriate measures and recommending a process for updating the initial set...More
Safe Practices for Better Healthcare
This project identified a list of 30 evidence-based "safe practices" that should be universally implemented in applicable care settings to reduce the risk of harm resulting from the processes or environments of care...More
Voluntary Consensus Standards for Adult Diabetes Care
The NQF has endorsed as voluntary consensus standards a set of performance measures for adult diabetes care for both accountability and quality improvement purposes...More
A National Framework for Healthcare Quality Measurement and Reporting
In December 1999, the NQF appointed a nine-member Strategic Framework Board (SFB) with a charge propose a national strategy for quality measurement and reporting. This document builds on that work...More
Improving Healthcare Quality for Minority Patients - Proceedings of a Workshop
The need to assess healthcare quality metrics specific to minority populations is particularly acute because of the significant disparities that persist in health and healthcare outcomes for minority populations in the United States...More
Serious Reportable Events in Healthcare
The NQF has identified and endorsed a set of serious preventable adverse events in healthcare that can be used to standardize data collection and reporting of these events within and across states. Previously, standardized definitions and measures of avoidable, serious adverse events did not exist...More