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Health Quality Organizations
The Puget Sound Health Alliance is not alone in the effort to improve health care quality and affordability. There are many outstanding organizations involved in this work throughout the country. Brief descriptions and website links to some of the best national organizations are presented below.
Ambulatory Care Quality Alliance (AHRQ)
Professional performance measurement is the emphasis of this Purchaser-Plan-Consumer-Government venture. Areas of focus include both quality and cost-of-care (efficiency) measure sets for professional services. Results planned to be part of a physician pay-for-performance program. Notable involvement by CMS and a number of national specialty societies.
Bridges to Excellence
This purchaser-plan national venture emphasizes ambulatory care for diabetes, cardiac and self-care. Physicians play a role in program design, which awards bonuses to high-performing group practices.
Care-Focused Purchasing (website under development)
Quality and efficiency measurement, for both hospitals and physicians, is the emphasis of this Purchaser-Plan venture. Large national employers are behind this push to accumulate claim data from insurers across the nation and standardize performance measurement. Objectives include increased system transparency and improved provider performance.
ConsumerHealthRatings.com
Consumer Health Ratings provides the most comprehensive listing of organizations that rate or report performance on specific hospitals, health plans, physicians, nursing homes, home health agencies and other health care providers in the United States. The ratings information is free.
Foundation for Healthcare Quality
Originally founded in 1988 to provide an independent review of a Community Health Information Management System, the Seattle-based Foundation has led dozens of evaluations ranging from use of comparison quality standards by consumers to supporting public health agencies in the surveillance of sudden health risks.
Leapfrog Group
Quality of care in the hospital is the emphasis of this Purchaser-Plan-Consumer venture. Areas of focus include (1) computerized physician order entry, (2) evidence-based referral, (3) hospital-based intensivists, and (4) patient safety. Bonuses awarded to high-performing hospitals.
Nationwide Health Information Network
Contracts to develop prototypes for the Nationwide Health Information Network architecture were recently awarded to teams of public and private entities across the country. The NHIN is intended to become the personal electronic health record standard for consumer-centric health care information. Its stated goals are to (1) inform clinical practice, (2) interconnect clinicians, (3) personalize care, and (4) improve population health.
National Committee for Quality Assurance
Professional quality of care is the emphasis of this Purchaser-Plan-Consumer-Government venture. Areas of focus include cardiac care and diabetes. Results used to recognize providers and health plans.
National Quality Forum
A variety of performance measurement domains is of interest to this Purchaser-Consumer-Government venture. Areas of focus include heart surgery, diabetes, patient safety, nursing home care, and patient care experience. NQF is increasingly seen as the entity which must vet performance measures before they may be widely deployed.
Physician Consortium for Performance Improvement
Professional performance measurement is the emphasis of this AMA-launched venture, with considerable involvement of national specialty societies. Areas of focus include physician-designed quality measures and various practice work flow-related indicators.
Qualis Health
Qualis is a private, nonprofit organization based in Seattle, where it has operated since its founding in 1974. Under a contract to the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, an agency of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Qualis Health serves as the Quality Improvement Organization (QIO) for Idaho and Washington.
To suggest any additional organizations that you believe should be listed here, please contact us to share the name and website address.
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