(The Joint Commission: Oakbrook Terrace, Illinois) -- Health care organizations, practitioners, purchasers, oversight bodies, and the public all rely on performance data to determine priority areas for quality improvement, evaluate performance, and make informed health care decisions. Yet, most performance measurement efforts operate in isolation from one another, rarely provide a consistent picture of overall quality, and represent a significant cost to the health care industry, according to a call for action recently released by The Joint Commission.

“Development of a National Performance Measurement Data Strategy” proposes a framework for creating a data infrastructure to support performance measurement activities that improve the quality of health care in the United States. The solutions proposed by a special roundtable focus on creating a data infrastructure that addresses consumer expectations for data privacy, supporting a data highway that allows for data sharing and linkages.

“The time has come to harness the many performance measurement efforts by creating a data infrastructure so information can be shared and translated into powerful tools for decision-making and improvement,” says Mark R. Chassin, M.D., M.P.P., M.P.H., and president of the Joint Commission. “Although there are significant challenges, the work of the roundtable clearly shows that this is a matter of will. We must invest the necessary resources and engage in a collaborative effort to provide credible, accurate, and useful health care performance information.”

The roundtable offers 22 principles for the development of a national performance measurement data strategy and identifies the following three strategies:

• Create the framework for a national performance measurement system that meets the needs of all of the various users of, and stakeholders in, performance data by standardizing measure definitions and data collection processes to produce comparable information. A national system for performance measurement data should be assured through sustainable funding from private and public-sector sources.

• Build a data highway to support the exchange of health information whose interoperability permits data exchange and aggregation when warranted. Information technology systems, such as electronic medical records, must be designed to support performance measurement activities and relieve registered nurses and other clinicians from the burden of manually paging through patient records to obtain needed data.

• Engage stakeholders and engender trust by addressing concern over the privacy of personal health information. Rules and principles must effectively focus on data use, integrity, and reporting. Significant attention also must be paid to educating patients on the options and risks inherent in data sharing, and the value of performance measurement.

“The proposals put forth by the roundtable aim to break down the barriers to achieving a national strategy,” says Eric B. Larson, M.D., M.P.H., roundtable co-chair and member of The Joint Commission’s board of commissioners. “With the explosion of performance measurement efforts, the ability to share and merge data has become crucial to developing consistent and true assessments of care.”

Part of a continuing series of white papers on key public policy issues that affect patient safety and health care quality, “Health Care at the Crossroads: Development of a National Performance Measurement Data Strategy” is available at www.jointcommission.org

For more information, visit www.jointcommission.org/NewsRoom/NewsReleases/nr_03_06_08.htm.