Welcome to the National Quality Forum

NQF Policy Conference: Speaker Spotlight

Just a reminder: Early registration is still open for NQF’s Policy Conference, Quality at the Crossroads. Register here by Friday, Sept. 26th to take advantage of the lower early registration rates.

The conference will feature a keynote presentation by Shannon Brownlee, author of Overtreated: Why Too Much Medicine is Making us Sicker and Poorer. Ms. Brownlee is a Visiting Scholar at the Clinical Center Department of Bioethics at the National Institutes of Health and the Schwartz Senior Fellow at the New America Foundation. In her presentation, Ms. Brownlee will examine the problem of overuse in our healthcare system and its effect on patient outcomes. In Overtreated, Ms. Brownlee explores why patients who do have access to treatment receive it to excess to the detriment of their own health. She believes that overuse can be addressed through a number of avenues, including investments in health information systems, shared decision making between doctors and patients, increased evidence-based research and payment reform that ends the fee-for-service trap.

Tell us What You Think: Comment and Vote!

NQF-endorsed voluntary consensus standards are widely viewed as the gold standard for measurement of healthcare quality. Votes and comments from our varied and diverse membership are what make NQF endorsement the gold standard. The following projects are now open for comment:

• National Voluntary Consensus Standards for Safe Practices for Better Healthcare: 2009 Update
• NQF Common Formats Comment Period

The following projects are open for member voting

• National Voluntary Consensus Standards for Hospital Care: Outcomes and Efficiency
• National Voluntary Consensus Standards for Outpatient Imaging Efficiency

To see open calls for nominations and other information, visit the Members Only section of the website.

(Not a member? Become one today!)

CLINICIAN-LEVEL PERFORMANCE MEASUREMENT AND REPORTING

A new Issue Brief from the NQF examines current efforts to more broadly define relevant and measurable elements of condition-specific care and related accountability. This Issue Brief builds on a workshop on clinician-level measurement convened by NQF in March 2008 and coincides with NQF’s recent endorsement of 67 new clinician-level consensus standards. More information on these new standards can be found here.

NATIONAL PRIORITIES PARTNERSHIP

The National Priorities Partnership is 28 organizations that wield extraordinary influence over the “cogs and wheels” that drive our healthcare system. We will transform healthcare from the inside out – where it has the best chance to succeed.

FIND OUT about the partner organizations

READ more on what we’ve done to date

CLOSING DISPARITIES GAP

Innovations in performance measurement and public reporting are closing the healthcare quality disparities gap. A new Issue Brief from the National Quality Forum, supported by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, highlights public and private initiatives underway at the national, regional, and local levels to measure performance and more effectively target interventions that reduce disparities.

The Kaiser Family Foundation has named NQF's issue brief "Closing the Disparities Gap in Healthcare Quality with Performance Measuresment and Public reporting" among its top Health Policy Picks.

2008 National Policy Conference: Quality at the Crossroads

Healthcare quality is at a crossroads. How will a new president shape the path our nation takes?
The National Quality Forum is uniquely positioned to coalesce the players in the field to ensure we are heading in the same direction—toward real change in America’s healthcare quality. NQF’s National Policy Conference will address both the political and policy issues facing health care quality. Don’t you want to be at the table?
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