Consumer coalition sets performance guidelines
Rapid adoption of PI measures used
A common coalition of more than 25 of the nation’s leading consumer, employer, and labor organizations — called the Consumer-Purchaser Disclosure Project — has unveiled guidelines to promote rapid, industrywide adoption of performance measures to help patients compare the relative quality and cost of care provided by the nation’s hospitals, physicians, and health care systems.
The Disclosure Project is supported by a grant from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and the Leapfrog Group.
"We know care varies significantly from provider to provider, and often these are life-and-death decisions," said Debra Ness, president of the National Partnership for Women & Families, and Disclosure Project co-chair, at the announcement.
"A lot of public and private organizations are moving to develop and institute measures of provider performance; these guidelines are intended to get organizations that are developing measures on the same page," she said.
The guidelines call for the following:
- Scientifically Valid Performance Measures endorsed by the National Quality Forum’s (NQF) consensus process: The NQF performance indicators should serve as primary measures. If the forum has not endorsed a measure for an aspect of health care performance, measures endorsed by national accrediting organizations should be used. If supplemental measures are implemented, they must be scientifically grounded, regularly updated, and reviewed by provider and consumer groups.
- Transparency of Provider Rating Methods: Provider rating methods, including detailed measurement specifications and algorithms used to combine scores and/or group providers into performance tiers, should be publicly disclosed.
- Coordinated Data Collection: If collection of data about performance creates a significant burden for providers, data collection should be coordinated across health plans and other purchasers who share hospitals and physicians within their contracted networks.
In developing the guidelines, the Disclosure Project considered issues that currently challenge standardization of performance assessment: defining uniform performance measures, making ratings useful and accessible to the public, and ensuring efficient collection of provider-level data with minimum burden for providers. These factors are important as hospitals and physicians often are burdened by evaluations from numerous sources that determine performance scores in very different ways.
"A consistent approach to measuring providers is an essential part of employers and health plans’ efforts to rein in costs and obtain better value," says Peter Lee, president and CEO of the Pacific Business Group on Health and co-chair of the Disclosure Project.
"These guidelines illustrate a shared commitment across groups who don’t always see eye-to-eye but are coming together to be a catalyst for performance improvement. Standardized information is the key to fostering provider accountability and to rewarding better performers," he adds.
(Editor’s note: For more information, go to: www.healthcaredisclosure.org.)
A common coalition of more than 25 of the nations leading consumer, employer, and labor organizations called the Consumer-Purchaser Disclosure Project has unveiled guidelines to promote rapid, industrywide adoption of performance measures to help patients compare the relative quality and cost of care provided by the nations hospitals, physicians, and health care systems.
Subscribe Now for Access
You have reached your article limit for the month. We hope you found our articles both enjoyable and insightful. For information on new subscriptions, product trials, alternative billing arrangements or group and site discounts please call 800-688-2421. We look forward to having you as a long-term member of the Relias Media community.