Quality measurement in health care: committee formed
According to Managed Care Weekly Digest, August 14, 2006, the AQA alliance (formerly Ambulatory Care Quality Alliance) and the Hospital Quality Alliance (HQA), have formed a new national Quality Alliance Steering Committee to improve measurement of quality in health care.
The AQA is an alliance of physician organizations, consumers, employers and health plan representatives that makes available information about quality of care by physicians. The HQA is a coalition of hospitals, nurses, physician organizations, accrediting agencies, government, consumers and business that makes available information about the quality of hospital care.
The joint efforts information on quality of health care available through the Internet. The new committee will work with members, the U.S. Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) and the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ).
Initially the new committee will coordinate and expand projects to combine public and private data to measure and report on performance. The AQA alliance has six pilot projects to identify, collect, and report data on quality of physician performance.
Since April of 2005, the HQA has been providing information on the quality of care provided to heart attack, heart failure and pneumonia patients in more than 4,000 hospitals. In September 2005, the HQA expanded its Web site to include information on prevention of surgical wound infections, and plans to add many additional aspects of care.
The new committee will work on expanding the AQA pilot projects to include hospital performance and measures of the cost of care and support expanded HQA reporting to provide practitioners and consumers with better information to use in evaluating options for care.