Measurement reporting may be coordinated
Measurement reporting may be coordinated
Aim is to increase efficiency, coherence
A task force of representatives from the country’s three leading health care quality oversight organizations is working to coordinate efforts to promote greater accountability in health care.
The American Medical Accreditation Program in Chicago, the Joint Commission on Accredita tion of Healthcare Organizations in Oakbrook Terrace, IL, and the National Committee for Quality Assurance in Washington, DC, have established the Performance Measurement Coor dinating Council (PMCC) and have appointed Carolyn Cocotas as staff director to manage the efforts.
The organizations have pledged to work together to find efficient ways to meet increasing demands created by often divergent measurement reporting systems, Cocotas says.
The PMCC is made up of five representatives from each of the three organizations. The three organizations have committed to work through the PMCC to address a range of performance measurement issues.
Each of the organizations currently defines performance measurement at its own respective level of the health care system, and each supports its own performance measurement efforts.
The three large accrediting organizations have committed to work together to coordinate — and, if possible, integrate — appropriate performance measurement development activities, Cocotas says. "At the provider level, this could have the effect of making providers’ lives easier by streamlining and minimizing the differences in the multiple requests for information they get from different parties," Cocotas adds.
The purpose of the PMCC is to coordinate activities so a set of performance measures will relate to each other, whether they apply to a physician, a hospital, or a managed care organization, Cocotas says.
Although a hospital may not be concerned with exactly the same measures or use them the same way as a physician or a managed care organization, the measures would be devised to permit useful comparisons and/or quality improvement measures across all entities, she adds.
"We think this can make a major contribution to the long-term efficiency of performance measurement in the health care sector. There is a lot of money being spent on performance measurement activities that are similar but have a lot of differences. If we coordinate these activities, we could reduce the amount of money spent on administrative activities and increase the amount spent on improving health," Cocotas adds.
The panel has recently released "Principles for Performance Measurement in Health Care," a consensus statement from the three organizations.
The next step is to develop a consensus on the attributes of measures and priorities for measurement, with other important work to follow, Cocotas says.
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