Measures

National Quality Forum

The National Quality Forum (NQF) is a nonprofit organization that endorses consensus standards for measuring and publically reporting performance at various patient contact care points the U.S. health care delivery system. Through a wide variety of stakeholders including consumers, public and private purchasers, physicians, nurses, hospitals, accrediting bodies and others the NQF is now the lead convener at a national level for structure, process and outcome measure review and adoption.

In this expanded role promoting the rapid advancement of "Measure - Report - Improve" as funded by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, the NQF is offering a web-based tool entitled the Quality Positioning System that can be accessed to view NQF endorsed measures. Heretofore there was no single location on the NQF website or elsewhere that offered a comprehensive search engine for measures. The Quality Positioning System is designed to help users:

- Find measures
- Understand the measure(s) and the developer's intent
- Assess where there may be gaps
- Create a measures of interest portfolio
- Give feedback to NQF

While the NQF is a multi-stakeholder member organization with dues and voting privileges, the Quality Positioning System is in the public domain with open access. SCCM continues as a member organization of the NQF. The Society has become increasingly more involved as members step forward to serve as individual content experts on various steering committees and in the Measures Application Partnership Hospital Workgroup. This volunteer effort continues to be important in strengthening the Society's mission to secure the highest quality care for all critically ill and injured patients.

Critical Care Societies Collaborative

The Critical Care Societies Collaborative consisting of the American Association of Critical-Care Nurses, American College of Chest Physicians, American Thoracic Society and SCCM  has formed a work group to coordinate a response to the NQF's call to review existing measures and recommend new measures to improve the delivery of safe, efficient care. The workgroup consists of two leaders from each organization and  will convene to review existing measures and identify gaps aimed at improving care, reducing harm and lowering the cost of care related to error and overuse. Members with input for the CCSC workgroup can contact SCCM Staff Partner Lori A.  Harmon, RRT, MBA at lharmon@sccm.org.