December
1, 2005 I FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
National System Needed to Measure and Report on Health
Care Performance;
New Board Should Be Created to Guide Development
The National Academies: Advisers to the Nation on Science,
Engineering, and Medicine
Contacts: Christine Stencel, Media Relations Officer;
Chris Dobbins, Media Relations Assistant
Office of News and Public Information; Phone: 202-334-2138;
E-mail <news@nas.edu>
WASHINGTON -- If pay-for-performance initiatives and
public reporting systems are to be effective in improving
the
quality of health care in the United States, a comprehensive,
universally accepted system is needed to measure and
report on the performance of health care providers and
organizations, says a new report from the Institute
of Medicine
of the National Academies. Congress should establish
a new board within the U.S. Department of Health and
Human Services to coordinate the development of standardized
performance measures and monitor the nation's progress
toward improving the health care system, said the committee
that wrote the congressionally mandated report.
"Performance measures are a fundamental building
block for all quality improvement initiatives,"
said committee
chair Steven Schroeder, professor of health and health
care, University of California, San Francisco. "One
of the
biggest obstacles to overcoming shortfalls in the quality
of health care is the absence of a coherent, national
system
for assessing and reporting on the performance of providers
and organizations. Leadership at the federal level is
necessary to ensure that the effort to develop performance
measures achieves overarching national goals for health
care improvement."
Improving quality of care has become a top priority
for all stakeholders in the health care system. Performance
measures are benchmarks by which health care providers
and organizations can determine their success in delivering
care – for example, regular blood and urine tests
for diabetic patients, a facility's 30-day survival
rate among cardiac bypass patients, or perceptions of
care collected from patient surveys.
Many individual public and private organizations –
including health plans, professional organizations,
and
consumer advocates – have made substantial progress
developing measures that cover important areas of clinical
care, organizational performance, and patients' perceptions
of care. But these independent initiatives have led
to duplication in some areas and neglect in others that
are important to national health goals, the committee
noted. Individual stakeholders understandably focus
on certain features of care that they consider to be
the highest priority
for improvement. But they frequently overlook areas
of national interest that are difficult to quantify,
such as whether
care is equitable, efficient, and well-coordinated.
The new National Quality Coordination Board recommended
by the committee should guide and organize efforts to
build upon existing initiatives to develop performance
measures. As an initial step toward achieving a universally
accepted set of measures, the report recommends the
immediate adoption of an evidence-based starter set
of existing measures that would cover care delivered
in ambulatory, acute care, and long-term care settings
and in dialysis centers. The board should also guide
the development of performance measures for areas that
currently lack them, such as efficiency, equity, and
patient-centered care.
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