Effective March 27, 2023, NQF is no longer the contracted consensus-based entity (CBE) for the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS). Battelle will serve as the CMS CBE for the Measure Applications Partnership (MAP). Materials posted to this site through the 2022-2023 Measures Under Consideration (MUC) cycle will continue to be available to the public. However, any materials for the 2023 Measure Set Review (MSR) and 2023-2024 MUC cycles and beyond can be found on the Battelle Partnership for Quality Measurement (PQM) website.
Please visit the Battelle PQM website at https://p4qm.org/ for more information.
The Measure Applications Partnership (MAP) is a public-private partnership convened by The National Quality Forum (NQF), in partnership with the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS), to provide input to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) on the selection of performance measures for public reporting and performance-based payment programs.
MAP’s pre-rulemaking work is conducted by the Coordinating Committee, the Clinician Workgroup, the Hospital Workgroup, the Post-Acute Care/Long-Term Care (PAC/LTC) Workgroup, the Rural Health Advisory group, and the Health Equity Advisory Group.
What does MAP do?
Since 2011, CMS has called upon MAP to recommend consensus-based measures most appropriate for public reporting, performance-based payment, and other uses. One of MAP’s key initiatives is to convene multistakeholders for an intensive annual review of the quality measures being considered by CMS for 20 federal health programs. MAP’s careful balance of these stakeholder interests ensures that the federal government will receive varied and thoughtful input on performance measure selection. As of this year, MAP involves approximately 145 healthcare leaders and experts representing nearly 100 private-sector organizations, as well as liaisons from eight federal agencies.
NQF has also convened a MAP Health Equity Advisory Group on behalf of the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) to provide input on the measures under consideration (MUCs) with the goal of reducing health differences closely linked with social determinants of health (SDOH). The MAP Health Equity Advisory Group participates in web meetings to review measures and provides feedback to the setting-specific Workgroups and the Coordinating Committee.
Additionally, for the 2021-2022 MAP cycle, NQF collaborated with CMS and the MAP Coordinating Committee to define a process for Measure Set Review (MSR). Initiated by CMS, the goal of this effort is to offer a holistic review of quality measures for potential removal with input from diverse multistakeholders. This process is now included as part of the yearly MAP cycle.
MAP’s work fosters the use of a more uniform set of measures in federal programs and across the public and private sectors. This uniformity helps providers better identify key areas in which to improve quality; reduces wasteful data collection for hospitals, physicians, and nurses; and helps to inform patients and payers about the use of and need for quality measures.
Learn more about MAP's work and access all of its published reports.
MAP operates under a three-tiered structure consisting of a Coordinating Committee along with three setting-specific Workgroups and two Advisory Groups.
- The MAP Coordinating Committee provides strategic direction to the MAP Workgroups and provides final approval of the recommendations and guidance developed by the different workgroups and advisory groups.
- MAP Workgroups advise the Coordinating Committee on measures needed for specific care settings, care providers, and patient populations.
- MAP Advisory Groups provide perspectives of stakeholders most affected by, and most knowledgeable about, quality challenges and potential solutions for rural communities and measurement issues affecting health disparities and the 1,000+ U.S. critical access hospitals to the Coordinating Committee and Workgroups.
MAP Membership
Volunteer, multistakeholder groups are the central component of the MAP process, and the success of NQF’s MAP work is due in large part to the participation of its members.
Each MAP group represents a variety of stakeholders, including consumers and patients, purchasers, providers, health professionals, health plans, suppliers and industry, community and public health, and healthcare quality experts. Due to the importance of representing diverse stakeholder perspectives within MAP groups, a limited number of individuals from each of these stakeholder groups can be seated. MAP includes organizational members, individual subject-matter experts (SMEs), and nonvoting federal liaisons. MAP members do not need to be members of NQF.
MAP’s processes are transparent. All MAP meetings are open to the public, and reports and other materials are made available on NQF’s website. Public comments are sought on MAP recommendations, and MAP reviews and considers every comment received.
Questions about MAP? Please contact MAPCoordinatingCommittee@qualityforum.org.
