What is the ACR doing for the Pediatric Rheumatologist in terms of quality?
The pediatric rheumatology community is represented on the major ACR committees conducting this work: Quality Measures Committee; Quality of Care Subcommittee; and the Criteria Subcommittee. In addition, a pediatric rheumatologist sits on the working group looking at implementation of quality measures in the practice setting. The first full set of quality performance indicators that the Quality Measures Committee hopes to develop “from scratch” will be on juvenile idiopathic arthritis. Pending ACR Board of Directors consideration and approval in February 2007, the Quality of Care Subcommittee anticipates starting work on these indicators in 2007 in collaboration with the Arthritis Foundation and possibly the American Academy of Pediatrics. Discussions with these groups about such a collaboration have begun. To date, the focus of quality indicator development projects has been on adult rheumatology primarily because some indicators had already been developed in that area, and these were
