What are we committing to regarding the selection and use of standardized quality measures for providers?
Significant progress has already been made in collaborative efforts to develop consistent, valid, and reliable measures of the quality of health care. Employers are encouraged to request that the health insurance plans, third party administrators, providers, and others with which they contract adopt these consistent measures and promote the further development of such measures. At the present time, the measures most fully developed are those endorsed by the National Quality Forum (NQF) and adopted by the AQA (a multi-stakeholder group focused on physician quality measures) or the Hospital Quality Alliance (HQA). For the benefit of their employees, employers are encouraged to request that the health insurance plans, third party administrators, providers, and others with which they contract use and report standard performance measures for quality that are adopted by the AQA or the HQA. To the extent employers wish to measure the quality of care in additional areas not addressed by these
