2012: A Year of Quality

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NEW YEARS IS but a memory and 2012 is now well underway. As we move into the New Year, we are provided with an excellent opportunity to glance into the future and examine trends and set goals for the future. Having spent much of the latter half of 2011 immersing myself in patient safety and quality work, it is becoming more and more apparent that patient safety and quality initiatives will be at the forefront of health care issues for 2012. While quality/performance improvement has always been imbedded within the health care system, we are now seeing a concentration around performance measurement that is patient centered and outcomes focused.

The Consumer-Purchaser Disclosure Project (CPDP), funded by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and other participating organizations, is a coalition dedicated to improving health care quality and affordability for American health care consumers and purchasers.¹ Comprised of leading national and local consumer organizations, employers, and labor organizations, the coalition's mission is to empower patients to make informed choices by sharing information about provider performance. Additionally, the coalition aims to enable health care systems to better reward their best performing providers.

Critical to improved health care system quality and affordability are meaningful and useable performance measures. Such measures are crucial to:¹

Unfortunately, there are not enough viable measures available to accomplish these goals.

In order for performance measures to be meaningful, they must address the needs of those that the health care system is intended to serve, as well as those who pay the price for poor, inefficient care… in other words, both consumers and purchasers. The CPDP has identified 10 criteria that should be used to guide the development, endorsement, and use of meaningful performance measures. These criteria include:¹

Within each of these criteria are associated problems and opportunities that must be addressed globally, but also at a specialty level. Over the next year, it is my goal to more closely examine each of these criteria, explore how they apply at the global level of health care, and more importantly, explore how they should be addressed from the perspective of perianesthesia practice. Let's make 2012 the “Year of Quality.” I look forward to connecting with each of you as we explore opportunities to improve the quality of care delivered to perianesthesia patients across all settings.

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Reference 

1. Consumer-Purchaser Disclosure Project. Consumer-Purchaser Disclosure Project: Better information. Better decisions. Better health. 2011. Available at: http://www.rwjf.org/files/research/72931.5415.tencriteria.pdf. Accessed December 21, 2011.
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