But often the reality is too many measures make it difficult to identify what is important for healthcare quality and can be burdensome for providers. For example, Massachusetts General Hospital and the Massachusetts General Physicians Organization report over 120 measures, some of which are very similar, to different external entities at a cost of over one percent of their net patient service revenue. Beyond the time and expense of collecting and reporting so many measures, it is often not clear to providers what they should focus on to improve.

NQF’s Measure Applications Partnership (MAP) has created a way to address these challenges. The “families” of measures approach groups high-impact measures that stakeholders can use to assess important areas for improvement, such as the National Quality Strategy (NQS) priorities. Families of measures also help promote alignment, or use of the same measures, which will decrease the measurement burden across the health system.

The recent final MAP Families of Measures report adds families of measures for the priority areas of affordability, person- and family-centered care, and population health. Together with the previously developed families for cancer care, cardiovascular disease, care coordination, diabetes, dual eligible beneficiaries, hospice care, and patient safety, there are now families of measures for assessing all parts of the NQS. Following a public comment period, the final MAP report was delivered to HHS on July 1.

Story updated July 1, 2014.