AQA Invitational Meeting

Summary

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The AQA held its fourth meeting to review the activities of three workgroups on performance measurement, reporting, and data sharing and aggregation. The meeting was held April 26, 2006.

Select to access the first, second, and third meetings.

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Introduction

The AQA (formerly known as the Ambulatory Care Quality Alliance) aims to improve health care quality and patient safety through a collaborative process in which key stakeholders:

• Agree on a strategy for measuring performance at the physician level.
• Collect and aggregate data in the least burdensome way.
• Report meaningful information to consumers, physicians, and other stakeholders to inform choices and improve outcomes.

AQA's mission and goals focus on key areas that can help identify quality gaps, control skyrocketing costs, reduce confusion and burdens in the marketplace, and otherwise address the challenges of the current health care system.

The timing of this stakeholder process has coincided with a growing interest in rewarding high-quality providers (through "pay for performance" or "p4p") and clinicians' burgeoning interest in adopting health information technology to enhance the quality, safety, and efficiency of care delivery.

The April 26, 2006, AQA meeting was convened to review the activities of AQA's three workgroups on:

• Performance measurement.
• Reporting.
• Data sharing and aggregation.

Carolyn Clancy, director of the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) was chair of the meeting, and Mark McClellan, administrator of the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS), delivered keynote remarks.

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