Founded on these principles 15 years ago, NQF still holds them true today as it seeks consensus across the healthcare field on the best standards of quality and patient safety. When NQF was founded, standardized measures were few and only used in the private sector, but now NQF has more than 600 endorsed measures that are improving U.S. health and healthcare in a host of ways, including increased use of preventive strategies, reduced hospital-acquired infections, strengthened cardiac care, better care for mothers and babies, and safer nursing care.

NQF is marking its anniversary with a special “15 Years and Counting” campaign. Throughout 2014, watch for new features each month here on the NQF homepage that detail real-world results of quality measures and patient safety standards as well as other important NQF contributions to improve health and healthcare. The campaign will culminate in early 2015 with an anniversary report and event that look forward to the future challenges for NQF, including:

• Streamlining measures by identifying those that matter most based on results achieved
• Accelerating the widespread adoption of high-impact measures and standards to reduce the reporting burden and speed improvement
• Maintaining and strengthening NQF’s unique and essential multistakeholder approach to quality measure evaluation and endorsement.

Be a part of the NQF 15th anniversary! Share your quality improvement stories at NQFresults@qualityforum.org.