The National Quality Forum

“Line 6 the national quality forum has over 400 member organizations. They represent all sectors in the healthcare quality landscape including: consumers; public and private purchasers; physicians, nurses, pharmacists, and other healthcare professionals; hospitals, nursing homes, and other provider organizations; accrediting and certifying bodies; supporting industries; and healthcare research and quality improvement organizations.”

“Members vote on a slate of candidates to fill board of director vacancies.”

“The board recommends a slate of candidates to fill board vacancies. This recommendation goes to the general membership for a vote. Membership must approve changes to governing documents.”

“The organization's form 990 undergoes a number of internal and external reviews before it is filed with the irs. The return is prepared by the organization's public accounting firm, bdo usa, and is then reviewed by the organization's finance and audit committee, a committee of the board. A final draft of the form 990 is then provided to each member of the organization's board of directors and to outside counsel for review and comment, before it is filed with the irs.”

“On an annual basis, conflict of interest forms are sent to board members and staff to complete. The general counsel reviews conflict of interest forms submitted by board members and board members orally disclose any relavant information annually in a public board session. Employee conflict of interest forms are screened by the human resources department and any disclosures made by employees are referred to the general counsel for follow-up and resolution.”

“The compensation committee, comprised of independent members of the board of directors, determines the ceo's compensation package by using comparable data approved by the entire board. Contemporaneous substantiation of the deliberation and decision is also maintained. The ceo determines the salaries of other officers and key employee based on outside comparability data and the results are documented in personnel files.”

“The organization makes its governing documents, conflict of interest policy, and financial statements available to the public upon request.”

“The national quality forum (nqf) is a unique, multi-stakeholder organization instrumental in advancing efforts to improve healthcare quality through performance measurement and public reporting. Nqf is a not-for-profit membership organization with more than 400 members representing virtually every sector of the healthcare system. Nqf operates under a three-part mission to improve the quality of american healthcare by setting national priorities and goals for performance improvement, endorsing national consensus standards for measuring and publicly reporting on performance, and promoting the attainment of national goals through education and outreach programs.”

“Strategic partnerships activities: national priorities partnership (npp) - the npp is an nqf-convened collaboration of 52 public- and private-sector organizations uniquely qualified to represent the array of stakeholders needed to improve the nation's healthcare system. In 2013, npp continued to focus on bringing the right organizations together at the national level to catalyze improvement at the local level. In support of hhs' partnership for patients initiative, the npp began developing the first of four quarterly meetings with patient safety leaders, designed to spur collaborative action in key topical areas. The npp also reconvened its maternity care action team, to continue to focus on reducing early elective deliveries, as well as its readmissions action team, with a focus on reducing readmissions for complex or vulnerable populations. Nqf added a patient and family engagement action team at the end of 2013 to spur engagement of patients and families in health systems improvement. Measure applications - convened by nqf in the spring of 2011, the measure applications partnership (map) is a public-private partnership made up of 60 organizations representing major stakeholder groups, 9 federal agencies, and 40 subject-matter experts. It was established to provide hhs with thoughtful, pre-rulemaking input about which performance measures to use in public reporting and payment within and across federal programs. Simultaneously, map is informing the thinking and decisions of private-sector leaders with respect to their measure-selection strategies. Map enables public- and private-sector leaders to work together to create a measurement strategy and implementation plan that is crosscutting and coordinated across settings of care; federal, state, and private programs; levels of measurement analysis; payer type; and points in time. In february 2013, map submitted its second annual statutorially required pre-rulemaking report, providing public/private advice to hhs about use of measures in 20 different federal programs. The report recommended that 141 of the over 500 measures that cms proposed at the end of 2012 move into federal programs. Map also supported the direction of an additional 166 measures, contingent on further development, testing, and/or endorsement, and recommended the phased removal of 64 measures and the retirement of an additional six measures from these federal accountability programs. In july 2013, map released a report that recommended a set or "family" of 55 performance measures for dual eligible beneficiaries-individuals enrolled in both the medicare and medicaid programs. These individuals often have complex overlapping care needs that require unique quality measurement strategies. Map's report identified high-leverage measurement opportunities to improve the health and health care of dual eligible beneficiaries. Robert wood johnson foundation (rwjf) grant - nqf's strategic partnerships team released an enhanced version of its quality positioning system (qps) in july 2013. Qps is the most reliable and comprehensive online source for finding all nqf-endorsed measures. This qps version 2.0 included enhanced search functionality, additional measure portfolios, and a streamlined design. Users from a range of different healthcare-related organizations used qps to conduct over 236,000 measure searches in 2013 alone. Also under the rwjf grant, nqf developed the "field guide to nqf resources," a publicly available online guide that provides plain-language explanations of quality measurement and nqf's role in the quality measurement continuum, and links to relevant reports and resources. Addressing measurement gaps-nqf initiated five projects in 2013 focused on priority areas for measurement for which there are significant gaps in feasible measures. The five priority areas are adult immunization; alzheimer's disease and related dementias; care coordination; health workforce; and person-centered care and outcomes. N”

“MEASURE ENDORSEMENT AND MEASUREMENT SCIENCE ACTIVITIES: NQF reviews and endorses healthcare performance measures that underpin federal and private-sector initiatives focused on enhancing the value of healthcare services. Since its inception in 1999, NQF has developed a portfolio of approximately 700 NQF-endorsed measures which are in widespread use across an array of settings. In concert with others, the work of NQF has contributed to a more information-rich healthcare system, and demonstrated that measures-particularly in tandem with delivery changes and payment reform-can lead to improvement in performance. NQF's endorsement projects use committees of experts from the public and private sectors-including physicians, consumers, and purchasers, as well as representatives of hospitals, health plans, and healthcare suppliers-to review and endorse measures of quality, cost, and efficiency. NQF endorsed 34 measures in 2013, including measures for chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD); diagnostic imaging and care for dementia and epilepsy; colonoscopies; vaccination and treatment for hepatitis C; patient falls; and appropriate treatment for upper respiratory infections. In addition, NQF had twelve measure endorsement projects in progress at the end of 2013 for diverse topic areas ranging from measures related to clinical conditions (cardiovascular, endocrine, musculoskeletal), to measures of cost and resource use, to cross-cutting measures focused on National Quality Strategy priorities such as care coordination and patient safety. NQF also removed 95 measures from its portfolio in 2013 for a variety of reasons: measures no longer met endorsement criteria; measures were harmonized with other similar, competing measures; or measure developers chose to retire measures they no longer wished to maintain. The removal of measures from NQF's portfolio helps ensure that the existing portfolio contains measures that are relevant, best-in-class, and reflective of current scientific evidence. In 2013, NQF also completed work that advanced the science of health care measurement. NQF provided guidance on how to evaluate composite measures-measures that combine information on multiple individual measures into a single summary measures. NQF also issued a report on assessing the feasibility of eMeasures, measures that are derived from electronic health records. As part of its ongoing efforts to streamline its measure review and endorsement process, NQF held a Kaizen Improvement Event in September 2013. This continuous improvement event included government policy makers, measure developers, and measure users in addition to NQF staff. By mapping out NQF's processes and how they interact with external stakeholders and external processes, participants were able to re-engineer many elements of the measure review and endorsement process. NQF is continuing to implement the suggested efficiencies to yield better measures faster.”

“HEALTH INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY ACTIVITIES: Health care performance measurement is increasingly moving to electronic platforms as the adoption of health information technology by hospitals, clinicians, and other providers has accelerated. NQF reviews electronic measures, or eMeasures, as part of its measure endorsement work. NQF has also contributed to the methodological basis of eMeasurement. NQF developed the Measure Authoring Tool, an application that allows measure developers to specify measures in eMeasure form. NQF also develop the Quality Data Model or QDM, an information model that provides a way to describe clinical concepts in a structured, standard format that can be read by health information technology systems. The Measure Authoring Tool uses the QDM as its basis. In 2013, NQF continued to update the QDM, and provide guidance to QDM users through conference calls and webinars. NQF then transitioned the QDM to a Federally Funded Research and Development Center. NQF also transitioned the Measure Authoring Tool to the federal government for further development and ongoing maintenance.”

“The other program services include conferences and workshops held by national quality forum.”

“JOYCE DUBOW - member of the Board of the Informed Patient Institute Carol Cronin - the Executive Director of the Informed Patient Institute Debra Ness - CEO of National Partnership Maureen Corry - employee of National Partnership. In addition, the National Partnership absorbed Maureen Corry's organization in 2013. Harold Miller - was the CEO of NRHI until spring 2013. Performed contract projects for the Network for Regional Healcare (NRHI). Elizabeth Mitchell - the CEO of NRHI. Louise Probst - BOD members Jim Chase and Louise Probst are on the NRHI Board.”

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