Call for Measures: Additional Home Health Process Measures

To date, NQF has endorsed 15 performance measures specific to home health quality. This “Call” solicits additional candidate measures for review, evaluation, and potential endorsement as national voluntary consensus standards for home health.  Topic areas may include, but not be limited to: immunization, medication management, pain management, fall prevention, depression screening/intervention, care coordination, risk assessment, heart failure, and diabetes.  Harmonization of similar measures will be a priority for this project.

Any organization or individual may submit measures for consideration.  To be included as part of the initial evaluation, candidate consensus standards must meet the following general criteria:

• be fully developed for use (e.g., research and testing have been completed);
• be open source or in the public domain*
• have an identified measure steward **
• be intended for both public reporting and quality improvement

All of the information provided on the “Measure Submission Form” must be submitted for each measure. In addtion, NQF 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. All materials not meeting these requirements will be returned to the sender. To submit a measure, please complete the following:

• Measure Submission Form, Version 3.0
• Intellectual Property Agreement

Materials should be submitted via email attachment to homehealth@qualityforum.org. All measure submission forms must be submitted by 6:00 pm, ET on Tuesday, October 14.

For more information, contact Lisa Hines, BSN, MS at 202.783.1300, or by email at homehealth@qualityforum.org

*NQF 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 see our Policy on Endorsement of Proprietary Measures.

** 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.