This NQF project seeks to identify and endorse a set of structural performance measures for quality improvement related to the use of Electronic Health Records (EHR), electronic prescribing (e-Prescribing), care management tools, and patient registries.
Interoperable health information technology (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 health IT on reducing medical errors, reporting quality/performance measurements, advancing patient education, and enhancing communication amongst care providers. As clinical decision support and performance measurement are further integrated into physician-level health IT tools, there is a need for structural measures of this technology utilization. Examples of such measures could include appropriate utilization of patient registry and tracking systems to monitor quality of care; use of EHRs that use common data elements or import/export models to facilitate quality measurement and reporting; use of clinical decision support at the point of care to support evidence-based practice; and use of electronic prescribing in the practice.
While health IT covers a broad range of applications, this project will focus on structural measures related to the appropriate use of the following technologies in the clinician practice, such as:
Given that the effective use of health IT is integrally related to the overall structure and design of office practice, structural measures that assess the use of health IT in the broader context of physician practice assessment tools will be included.
This project, like all NQF activities, involves the active participation of representatives from across the spectrum of healthcare stakeholders. The project is guided by a Steering Committee. Agreement around the recommendations will be developed through NQF’s formal Consensus Development Process (CDP).
Funding for this project has been provided by the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services. For more information, contact Daniel Rosenthal at 202.783.1300 or via email, HITstructural@qualityforum.org.