The report identifies opportunities to improve data and make it more useful for systematic improvement. Specific stakeholder action could include the government making Medicare data more broadly available in a timely manner, states building an analytic platform for Medicaid, and private payers facilitating open data and public reporting. In addition, electronic health record (EHR) vendors and health information technology policymakers could promote “true” interoperability between different EHR systems and could improve the healthcare delivery system’s ability to retrieve and act on data by preventing recurring high fees for data access.

The report describes actions that all stakeholders could take to make data more available and usable, including focusing on common metrics, ensuring that the healthcare workforce has the necessary tools to apply health data for improvement, and establishing standards for common data elements that can be collected, exchanged, and reported.

Supported by the Peterson Center on Healthcare and the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation, the NQF initiative was spurred by a 2014 report by the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology (PCAST) that called for systems engineering approaches to improve healthcare quality and value.

“Data to measure progress is fundamental to improving patient care and outcomes, but the healthcare industry has yet to fully capture the potential of big data to engineer large-scale change,” said Christine K. Cassel, MD, president and CEO of NQF. “This report outlines innovative strategies to help make data more accessible and useful, for meaningful system wide improvement.”