Choosing and evaluating clinical performance measures
The importance and utility of routine externally reported assessments of the quality of health care delivered in managed care organizations and hospitals have become widely accepted. Because externally reported measures of quality of health care are intended to inform or lead to action, proposers of such measures have a responsibility to ensure that the results of the measures are meaningful, scientifically sound, and interpretable. Increased standardization of both the expectations for public release on measures of quality and the criteria by which such measures will be evaluated should contribute to improvements in the larger field of quality assessment.
Originally published in: The Joint Commission Journal on Quality Improvement, v. 24, no. 9, September 1998, pp. 470-479.
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