The Consumer-Purchaser Alliance has published these criteria for evaluating measures of health care quality performance. These criteria reflect the perspectives of those who receive and pay for care, and should be used to guide the development, endorsement, and use of performance measures. These criteria are:
- Make consumer and purchaser needs a priority in performance measurement.
- Use direct feedback from patients and their families to measure performance.
- Build a comprehensive “dashboard” of measures that provides a complete picture of the care patients receive.
- Focus measurement on areas of care where the potential to improve health outcomes and increase the effectiveness and efficiency of care is greatest.
- Ensure that measures generate the most valuable information possible.
- Require that all patients fitting appropriate clinical criteria be included in the measure population.
- Assess whether treatment recommendations are followed.
- De-emphasize documentation (check-the-box) measures.
- Measure the performance of providers at all levels (e.g., individual physicians, medical groups, accountable care organizations).
- Collect performance measurement data efficiently.
Ignatius Bau 