New Health Care System Would Require Quality Reporting

The American Health Quality Association has thrown its support behind the creation of a comprehensive system to measure and report on the performance of health care organizations and practitioners. The Institute of Medicine, a health care trade group, recently proposed creating the new system, which would be a universal reporting bank for measuring the quality of health care and rewarding high-quality care. The AHQA, which is a lobbying agency, has proposed that quality-improvement organizations (QIO), which are consultants to hospitals, nursing homes and home-health agencies, should provide the measurement and reporting capabilities.

“The new system should take advantage of the existing QIO national measurement and improvement infrastructure, which has been developed by Medicare and QIO experts in the field with significant federal investment over more than a decade,” says David Schulke, AHQA executive vice president. “QIOs have led the effort to help providers collect and report data since the beginning of public reporting initiatives and they’ve spearheaded statewide efforts all over the country to educate consumers about quality reporting. In the process, they have built a national infrastructure of expertise which can ensure the success of the Institute of Medicine’s proposed system.”

Among the AHQA’s recommendations to Congress for the quality system are:

• Increase public awareness
• Expedite improvement
• Ensure efficient, accurate reporting
• Expand value-based purchasing such as pay-for-performance initiatives
• Speed the adoption of health information technology
• Establish and support state-level performance priorities
• Ensure fairness and practicality of measures
• Continuously refresh measures
• Measure and improve care coordination

For more information, visit www.ahqa.org.

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