NQF Helps Ensure Health IT Captures Information to Drive Quality Improvement

Quality Data Set Provides Framework for Integrating Data to Measure Quality of
Care Patients Receive

WASHINGTON, Nov. 12 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- The National Quality Forum
(NQF) announced today the release of the Quality Data Set (QDS), a common
technological framework for defining clinical data necessary to measure
performance and accelerate improvement in patients' quality of care. The QDS
framework provides a standardized set of data that should be captured in
patients' electronic health records and is applicable to all care settings a
patient is likely to use in his or her lifetime.

"Providing a common data resource for all stakeholders in the quality-measures
supply chain will allow us to align our efforts and improve the comparability
of quality reports while dramatically reducing the burden of quality
measurement," said Paul Tang, MD, MS, chair of the expert panel that drafted
the QDS. "This is a dynamic structure that will continue to grow and expand to
meet future needs of quality measurement." Dr. Tang is vice president and
chief medical information officer at the Palo Alto Medical Foundation and
consulting associate professor of medicine (Biomedical Informatics) at
Stanford University.

To date, collecting and reporting meaningful healthcare performance data has
been a largely manual process, which not only creates burden, but can be
inefficient and lead to inconsistent results. The QDS acts as a dictionary for
quality measurement, providing a standardized core set of data. Common
definitions are the foundation of strong benchmarking and performance
comparison. NQF soon will begin requiring measures submitted for endorsement
to include e-specifications that align with the QDS framework.

"We are so pleased that we now have this fundamental building block for
quality measurement and improvement," said Janet Corrigan, NQF president and
CEO. "The Quality Data Set will help ensure that measure developers use common
data definitions and conventions when specifying measures for use with
electronic health records."

The QDS framework ensures the latest health information technology
requirements are seamlessly woven into quality measures. By providing a common
language to describe the information within quality measures, the QDS enables
quality measurement from a variety of electronic sources, including electronic
health records (EHRs), personal health records (PHRs), registries and health
information exchanges (HIEs). The framework consists of standard elements (a
code list for a specific condition such as diabetes, or a medication such as
aspirin); quality data elements (information describing the context of use in
the clinical care process such as a past history of diabetes or the
administration of aspirin); and data flow attributes (the sources of the
information --who is providing the standard and quality data elements, what
the care setting is, etc.)

Background on the Development of the QDS
NQF's Health Information Technology Expert Panel (HITEP), chaired by Dr. Tang,
was reconvened specifically to develop the QDS. HITEP builds on the work of a
2008 panel, which identified 11 data categories and 39 data types. While
HITEP's first report led to new feasibility criteria for measures endorsed by
NQF, HITEP's latest work ensures measure specifications best-leverage
electronic clinical information from disparate sources. To define the QDS
framework, HITEP and its technical panels reviewed the data requirements
associated with all NQF-endorsed(R) quality measures and considered additional
requirements for future cross-cutting, patient-centered measures. The initial
QDS will be populated to support the measures currently included in NQF's
portfolio.

This work was conducted under a contract from the Agency for Healthcare
Research and Quality.

The mission of the National Quality Forum is 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. NQF, a non-profit organization
(www.qualityforum.org) with diverse stakeholders across the public and private
health sectors, was established in 1999 and is based in Washington, DC.

SOURCE National Quality Forum

Dan Rafter, NQF, +1-202-783-1300, drafter@qualityforum.org