ArticleDeveloping Measures for Pediatric Quality: Methods and Experiences of the CHIPRA Pediatric Quality Measures Program Grantees
Section snippets
Measures Development Process
Quality measures in the health care context are tools that characterize a structure, process or outcome relevant to quality goals such as safety, effectiveness, efficiency, and patient-centeredness.7 Measures serve purposes as varied as monitoring performance or describing trends, driving internal quality activities, or holding entities accountable. For the PQMP, CHIPRA called for measures for monitoring care of children enrolled in Medicaid/CHIP and in public and private health care
Case Studies
Producing measures that achieve or balance the desirable attributes is complex. The following examples illustrate how PQMP grantees developed measures for 2 topics. The cases describe some challenges that affect the field of pediatrics in particular and others that encumber quality measures in general.
Discussion
Despite their work in widely divergent content areas, these case studies followed similar steps in evidence review, measure specification, testing, and stakeholder engagement. These and other PQMP grantees demonstrated innovative approaches to address limits to the evidence base, overcome data challenges, and meaningfully engage stakeholders in developing the measures.
Conclusions
As illustrated, the PQMP grantees followed a common approach to measures development but varied it to meet the challenges of creating pediatric measures in complex medical domains. On the basis of this experience, we have several recommendations for future measures development. First, we need continued investment in research to generate the empirical evidence required for measures development. We are seeing some movement in this area: spurred by national incentive programs, broader adoption of
Acknowledgments
Supported in part by grants U18HS20518 (CAPQuaM), U18HS20513 (CEQM), U18HS20508 (CHOP CoE), U18HS20506 (COE4CCN), U18HS20503 (NCINQ), U18HS20498 (PMCoE), and U18HS20516 (Q-METRIC) from the AHRQ. The content is solely the responsibility of the authors and does not necessarily represent the official views of the AHRQ.
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The authors declare that they have no conflict of interest.
Publication of this article was supported by the US Department of Health and Human Services and the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality.
The views expressed in this article are those of the authors and do not necessarily represent the views of the US Department of Health and Human Services or the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality.