Field of Work: Health care performance measurement

Problem Synopsis: Americans receive significantly different care depending on where they live, which doctors and hospitals they use and their race and ethnicity. The cost of that care also varies significantly by provider and region, regardless of outcome. A single, nationally consistent, technologically sound and efficient strategy for measuring and reporting information on performance is key to ensuring high-quality care.

Synopsis of the Work: The High-Value Health Care Project was an initiative of the Quality Alliance Steering Committee—composed of top executives from more than 30 health care and business organizations. The project was designed to inform policy-makers and the private sector about the best ways to collaborate to gather, analyze and report critical information on performance. The Engelberg Center for Health Care Reform at the Brookings Institution coordinated the project. America's Health Insurance Plans Foundation and the American Board of Medical Specialties Research and Education Foundation also developed key components of the project.

Key Results: The High-Value Health Care Project built the initial infrastructure for a nationwide performance measurement and reporting system. Project staff identified strategies for combining administrative and clinical data for use in measuring performance. They selected 22 measures of physician performance in preventing and managing chronic conditions; pilot-tested a methodology for combining information on those measures across health plans; and communicated with physicians about the findings. In addition, they developed 22 episode-of-care cost measures for diagnosing, treating and managing 12 common and costly medical conditions, and tested the measures on a commercial health care claims dataset that drew on a pool of 15 million insured people, and they also developed models for collecting and reporting information on patients' race, ethnicity and language, and using that information in performance measurement.