NEW MEASURES ASSESSING CARE FOR HIV/AIDS PATIENTS
UNVEILED FOR PUBLIC COMMENT
Measures proposed by NCQA, PCPI, HRSA, and IDSA for
voluntary reporting measure quality of HIV/AIDS care.
WASHINGTON—A set of measures assessing the quality of care for HIV/AIDS patients was released today for public comment. Developed by the National Committee for Quality Assurance (NCQA) in collaboration with the AMA-convened Physician Consortium for Performance Improvement® (PCPI), the Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA), and Infectious Diseases Society of America/HIV Medicine Association, the measures enable assessment of how well individual providers and health systems care for patients with HIV/AIDS.
The measures will be considered for endorsement by the National Quality Forum and for use in the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services’ Physician Quality Reporting Initiative to capture data about the quality of care delivered to people with HIV/AIDS.
“For patients with HIV or AIDS, appropriate care management and high-quality care really is a matter of life or death,” said NCQA President Margaret E. O’Kane. “These new measures will help doctors and health plans assess how well they care for HIV-positive patients, and hopefully serve as a roadmap for future quality improvement. We’re delighted to have worked so closely with a number of organizations to bring about their development.”
The HIV/AIDS measures join eight specialty measurement sets released for public comment in 2006. Those measure sets addressed such areas of care as emergency medicine, stroke care and osteoporosis.
“Caring for HIV is a complex undertaking. Defining quality HIV care is essential to ensuring that all HIV-infected patients receive the care they need and deserve,“ said HIV/AIDS Expert Work Group Co-Chair, Michael Horberg. M.D., M.A.S., F.A.C.P., A.A.H.I.V.S. “Working with so many respected leaders in the field of HIV care has resulted in a set of standards that can serve as a benchmark for any physician or program striving to provide the necessary care for their HIV-positive patients.”
This set of quality measures were developed with the support of a contract from HRSA and the PCPI. “The PCPI is committed to developing evidence-based performance measures to help physicians continue to improve the quality of patient care,” said PCPI Co-Chair Bernard M. Rosof, M.D., M.A.C.P. “We have collaborated with medical specialty experts and health quality experts to develop these measure sets. We look forward to receiving input from physicians and others during this public comment process so we can continue to refine the measures.”
To view and comment on the measure sets, log on to www.ncqa.org/publiccomment.aspx. Interested parties are invited to comment on the measures through December 14.
NCQA is a private, non-profit organization dedicated to improving health care quality. NCQA accredits and certifies a wide range of health care organizations, recognizes physicians and physician groups in key clinical areas and manages the evolution of HEDIS, the tool the nation’s health plans use to measure and report on their performance. NCQA is committed to providing health care quality information through the Web, media and data licensing agreements in order to help consumers, employers and others make more informed health care choices.
The American Medical Association (AMA)-convened Physician Consortium for Performance Improvement (PCPI) is committed to enhancing quality of care and patient safety by taking the lead in the development, testing, and maintenance of evidence-based clinical performance measures and measurement resources for physicians. The PCPI is comprised of more than 100 national medical specialty and state medical societies; the Council of Medical Specialty Societies; American Board of Medical Specialties and its member-boards; experts in methodology and data collection; the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality; and Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services.
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Physician Consortium for Performance Improvement® is a registered trademark of the American Medical Association