NCQA Teams Up to Develop Diabetes Quality Measure

December 3, 2019 · Jazmyne Carter

There is nothing like a winning team. Our work with countless allied organizations over the years proved exceedingly rewarding. Now, we have another to tell you about.

Quality Measures Innovation Grant

Every two years, AARP and OptumLabs awards a Quality Measures Innovation Grant. The grant funds projects that develop and test innovative health quality and performance measures. The idea—one that we are 100% behind–is to improve patient outcomes for older Americans with measures that drive better performance through accountability. In addition to the $150,000 grant, winners also get access to OptumLabs unique dataset for their work. The influential organizations announced grant winners last week.

Our Team

As you may have figured out by now, NCQA is among the grant winners. And while this post started with our benefactors, our collaboration doesn’t end there. NCQA teamed up with several other organizations for this work. They are: The National Kidney foundation, American Medical Group Association (AMGA), the Physician Consortium for Performance Improvement and the University of California San Francisco.

This team of organizations intends to develop a performance measure to evaluate adult kidney health with diabetes mellitus (DM). We want to improve testing, identification, and evidence-based care for American adults with chronic kidney disease. That is especially important for older adults. They are more likely to be diagnosed with chronic kidney disease and DM.

We, of course, believe performance measurement is the key to success in improving care. We also believe in the concepts of innovation and collaboration.

So, we thank AARP and Optum Labs and for their support. We also thank the team for including us. We know we can’t improve health care quality alone. Still, we are always amazed at how these allied organizations step forward to pitch in.

There’s nothing like a winning team, except maybe, the win.