NAPH Submits Comments on Health Care Quality Measures to AHRQ - March 15, 2011

On March 1, NAPH submitted a letter to the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) Advisory Council Subcommittee in response to a request for comments on the Initial Set of Health Quality Measures for Medicaid-Eligible Adults. In the letter, NAPH recommended that measures need to be aligned with the National Healthcare Quality Strategy and Plan as well as with metrics proposed in Healthy People 2020. NAPH advised that measures without NQF approval be removed and that proposed Patient Quality Indicators (PQI) be subject to further study. To reduce the burden of measurement, NAPH also suggested that the use of several measures be delayed until the use of electronic health records becomes more widespread. In the end, only 22 out of 51 measures were recommended by NAPH for use to measure quality for this population.