New RWJF/Urban Institute Study on Performance Measurement

To improve performance, health care leaders need to understand the strengths and weaknesses of performance measures, according to a Robert Wood Johnson Foundation-funded report from the Urban Institute, "Achieving the Potential of Health Care Performance Measures: Timely Analysis of Immediate Health Policy Issues."

The authors offer seven policy recommendations for reaching the full potential of performance measurement in health care:

1. Decisively move from measuring processes to outcomes.
2. Use quality measures strategically, adopting other quality improvement approaches where measures fall short.
3. Measure quality at the level of the organization, not the clinician.
4. Measure patient experience with care and patient-reported outcomes as ends in themselves.
5. Use measurement to promote the concept of the rapid-learning healthcare system.
6. Invest in the "basic science" of measurement development.
7. Task a single entity with defining standards for measuring and reporting quality and cost data, similar to the role the Securities and Exchange Commission serves for the reporting of corporate financial data, to improve the validity, comparability and transparency of publicly reported healthcare quality data.