Cover: Improving the Quality of Quality Measurement

Improving the Quality of Quality Measurement

Published in: Journal of General Internal Medicine, Editorial, 2016

Posted on RAND.org on March 21, 2016

by Cheryl L. Damberg, David William Baker

Research Question

  1. How can we design performance measures that help providers and health systems prevent or slow the onslaught of disease, improve or slow decline in function, and provide care consistent with patient preferences?

To help providers improve continuously, the measurement system must also improve continuously, taking into account patient preferences and tradeoffs, providing richer data that cuts across providers and settings, and summarizing the results in real time for providers to use in improving quality.

Key Findings

  • To help providers improve continuously, the measurement system must also improve continuously.
  • The next phase of quality measurement will require constructing measures that take into account patient preferences and tradeoffs; better data that cuts across providers and settings and has richer information on outcomes and patient factors affecting outcomes; and better ability to summarize results of the measurement in real time for use by providers to support quality improvement.

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