NQF Announces Winners of 2017 Innovation Challenge 

Washington, DC—The National Quality Forum (NQF) today announced five winning entries for its 2017 Innovation Challenge. The contest challenged NQF members and others in the measure development community to submit innovative and agile approaches to incorporating one or more Principles for Making Health Care Measurement Patient-Centered in performance measurement. Innovation Challenge winners received a cash prize and a national platform to share ideas through the NQF Learning Collaborative.

NQF issued the 2017 Innovation Challenge as part of its Measure Incubator^™, an initiative that nurtures the development of needed measures by connecting organizations interested in particular measure concepts with measure development experts, financial and technical resources, and data. NQF received a total of 32 submissions for the Innovation Challenge, and all entries will be featured content for NQF’s Learning Collaborative. Launched in early 2017, the NQF Learning Collaborative shares knowledge, lessons learned, and best practices to inform, improve, accelerate, and better target measure development.

“NQF is deeply committed to fostering more meaningful, innovative, and agile measures,” said Tracy Spinks, senior director of quality innovations for NQF. “The 2017 Innovation Challenge winners pose inspiring patient-centered measurement solutions to drive improved, patient-focused care in North America and abroad.”

The 2017 Innovation Challenge winners and their organizational affiliations are:

• Colleen A. McHorney, PhD, Evidera and Dayo Jagun, MBBS, MPH, Genentech—Share ongoing work where patients and caregivers have a central role in conceptualizing oncology measures that address patients’ concerns, values, and preferences
• Saraswathi Vedam, RM, FACNM, SciD, Birth Place Lab, University of British Columbia—Describes the development and validation of patient-designed measures of autonomy and respect, as well as tools to capture patients’ reported mistreatment in maternity care
• Katharina Kovacs Burns, MSc, MHSA, PhD, Alberta Health Services—Explores a strategy to engage patient and family advisors in gathering and analyzing patient experience data in real-time
• Sameer Saini, MD, MS, VA Ann Arbor Center for Clinical Management Research and University of Michigan Institute for Healthcare Policy and Innovation—Outlines measures of colorectal cancer screening that incorporate individual screening benefit and patient preferences
• Matthew Pickering, PharmD, RPh, Pharmacy Quality Alliance and Eleanor Perfetto, PhD, MS, National Health Council—Propose a rubric to assess the patient-centeredness of measure development and implementation

Innovation Challenge winners will receive a cash award of $2,000. Winners will present their entries during NQF webinars beginning January 23, 2018. Register here.

###

The National Quality Forum leads national collaboration to improve health and healthcare quality through measurement. Learn more at www.qualityforum.org.