Why is NQF important?
The American healthcare system offers millions of patients access to healthcare provided by highly skilled, committed professionals and first-rate healthcare institutions. At the same time, the system is marked by serious and pervasive deficiencies in quality. Quality problems affect all patients, regardless of age, gender, financial resources, or race. In addition, quality problems cut across the delivery system, and are not the result of any single financing or payment arrangement. Quality deficiencies result in increased mortality and morbidity and in failure to alleviate conditions that cause pain and disability, leading to a lower quality of life, a less productive workforce, and billions of dollars in unnecessary costs. To improve the quality of American healthcare, NQF convenes diverse stakeholders from across the healthcare system to set national priorities to improve healthcare quality and to endorse standards to gauge our progress in achieving those goals.
