Performance measures offer a head start

The physician-developed standards could form the basis for building consensus in a national quality initiative.

By Andis Robeznieks, AMNews staff. May 24/31, 2004.

The National Quality Forum has hit the ground running in its five-year mission to create a national, consensus-built set of ambulatory care performance measures. Instead of blindly going where no one has gone before, NQF is considering using the measure sets already developed by an AMA-led consortium as voluntary national standards until its consensus-building process is completed.

There is pressure coming from politicians, consumers and employer health care purchasers to speed adoption of such measures. So AMA Immediate Past President Yank Coble, MD, called the NQF action significant.

"It means that these measures -- that were developed by the profession -- can get out and be used more rapidly than those measures that might not be as suitable," Dr. Coble said.

"It's clear that there are going to be measures and attention to the cost of care, so the more the profession maintains its leadership, the better off it will be," he added. "If physicians develop measures based on science and their expertise, it's better than someone else doing it who doesn't have the best interest of patients at heart."

The NQF board voted April 29 in Boston to conduct an expedited review of the AMA-led Physician Consortium for Performance Improvement's existing performance measure sets.

A decision is expected in about three months about whether these sets will get the endorsement of the Washington, D.C.-based NQF, which is comprised of more than 200 member groups, including the AMA.