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AQA Adopts Additional Standard Quality Measures for Practitioners in 25 Surgical and Medical Specialties

Posted on: Wednesday, 15 November 2006, 15:00 CST

WASHINGTON, Nov. 15 /PRNewswire/ -- At its fall meeting, the AQA Alliance adopted 31 quality measures for practitioners in 25 surgical and medical specialties, bringing to 80 the total number of AQA-adopted measures being widely incorporated in provider contracts and implemented in medical practice. The sets of newly adopted measures build on those previously adopted for primary care, cardiology, and cardiac surgery.

Measures were proposed by and approved for use among rheumatologists, clinical endocrinologists, dermatologists, ophthalmologists, neurologists, radiologists, and the 20 surgical specialties and subspecialties that are members of the Surgical Quality Alliance. In addition, a survey of patient satisfaction with individual physicians and groups was adopted. Additional sets of standard measures will be proposed for adoption at future AQA meetings.

A complete list of AQA-adopted measures and their specifications can be found at http://www.aqaalliance.org/.

AQA is the broad-based national coalition of 150 organizations working together on a strategy to measure, report on, and improve physician practice. AQA's members represent dozens of physician specialties, consumer groups, employers, government, health insurance plans, and accrediting and quality groups.

AQA's role is to reach consensus on and to facilitate the widespread implementation of standard measures that have been through the review process of the National Quality Forum (NQF) or will be referred for action by the NQF. These are measures that are developed by organizations such as the AMA- convened Physician Consortium for Performance Improvement and the National Committee for Quality Assurance.

At the same time, progress is being made at six initial sites of a pilot project announced March 1 that, for the first time, combines public sector and private sector data to measure and report on physician practice in a clear, useful, and transparent way for consumers and purchasers of health care, as well as for practicing physicians. The AQA pilot, which is testing approaches to aggregating and reporting data on physician performance, will first report publicly in 2007.

This pilot project is a foundation for the transparency initiative announced recently by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, and it will be expanded in a way that will create a national infrastructure for local measurement and reporting of data.

"The work of the AQA alliance -- building a strategy to measure, report on, and improve physician performance -- is fundamental to all the major quality goals for our health care system, and it continues to gain momentum and move forward," said Carolyn Clancy, Director, Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality.

While physicians work to deliver high quality care, there have not been sufficient data to help them identify areas needing improvement. When physicians are provided with meaningful information, they can then take action to further improve care delivery. At the same time, useful information provided to consumers and purchasers allows them to make more informed health care decisions that meet their individual needs.

Until recently, the measuring and reporting of performance at the physician level have been conducted piecemeal. Physicians with patients covered by various public and private programs have their performance measured separately, often against different sets of measures, for each group. The work of the AQA Alliance is designed to overcome this roadblock.

Previously many different private and public sector groups have attempted to step up to the challenge of designing models for assessing performance and reporting data. Yet, the proliferation of multiple, uncoordinated, and sometimes conflicting initiatives has significant unintended consequences for different stakeholders.

Duplicative, piecemeal efforts: * Unnecessarily burden physicians, other clinicians, and health insurance plans with different data requests, shifting focus away from quality and efficiency improvement; * Create confusion among consumers because different, perhaps inconsistent, information is being publicly reported; and * Detract from efforts by employers to use data to design programs that meet the needs of their employees.

Until now no mechanisms existed to assess performance using standard measures or to aggregate data from various sources. The goal of the AQA Alliance is to promote a standard, more comprehensive view of physician practice.

AQA Alliance

CONTACT: Susan Pisano of AHIP, +1-202-778-3245; Karen Migdail of AHRQ,+1-301-427-1855; Allison Ewing of ACP, +1-215-352-2649; or Sarah Thomas ofAAFP, +1-913-906-6000

Web site: http://www.aqaalliance.org/

Source: PRNewswire

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