The Opportunity

Ensuring person and family-centered care is a core concept embedded in the National Quality Strategy priority of ensuring that each person and family is engaged as partners in their care.  Person and family-centered care encompasses patient and family engagement in care, including shared decision-making and preparation and activation for self-care management, and the outcomes of interest to patients receiving healthcare services, including health-related quality of life, functional status, symptoms and symptom burden, and experience with care. This project will primarily focus on patient-reported outcomes (PROs), but also may include some clinician-assessed functional status measures. NQF’s 2012 project on PROs in performance measurement provides a basis for reviewing PRO-based performance measures, referred to as PRO-PMs.

NQF has identified 40 endorsed measures that are due for endorsement maintenance. Given the number and complexity of endorsed measures to review as well as an expectation of additional new measure submissions, NQF will undertake this project in two phases.  Phase 1 will examine experience with care measures and Phase 2 will review measures of functional status (clinician and patient-assessed) and health-related quality of life. The second phase will begin immediately after the first phase.

About the Project

This project began October 28, 2013. 

Objectives

• In two phases, this project will review person and family-centered care measures for endorsement.  Phase 1 will focus on experience with care measures; Phase 2 will examine measures of health-related quality of life, including functional status and clinician-assessed function.  A future phase of this project will review measures on patient communication and symptom/symptom burden. 
• This project will provide maintenance for measures previously endorsed, as well as review newly submitted measures. 

NQF Process

• Candidate measures will be considered for NQF endorsement as national voluntary consensus standards. Consensus on the recommendations will be developed through NQF’s formal Consensus Development Process (CDP, Version 1.8). This project involves the active participation of representatives from across the spectrum of healthcare stakeholders and will be guided by a Steering Committee.

Funding

• This project is funded under NQF’s contract with the Department of Health and Human Services.

For information about the availability of auxiliary aids and services for NQF’s federally funded projects, please visit: http://www.medicare.gov/about-us/nondiscrimination/nondiscrimination-notice.html.

Related NQF Work

• Patient-Reported Outcomes  
• Healthcare Disparities and Cultural Competency  
• Home Health: Additional Measures
• Clinically Enriched Administrative Data
• Nursing Homes
• Palliative Care and End of Life Care
• Patient Outcome Measures: Phases 1 and 2
• Patient Outcome Measures: Child and Mental Health
• Renal Endorsement Maintenance 2011

Contact Information

For further information, contact pfcc@qualityforum.org.