Chip Kahn on Better Alignment of Quality Measures

Measurement is essential to improving care and having the equivalent measurements across the field will allow clinicians and providers to be held accountable for the care they provide, said Chip Kahn, president and CEO of the Federation of American Hospitals.

Transcript (modified)

How can the alignment of measurements be improved?

Measurement is key to improvement of care as well as assuring those who pay for care that those providing care are accountable. And right now we’re still groping towards what the right measurement is, but the different coverage in payment systems—whether they be Medicare for the seniors, or Medicaid for the lowest income, or the various private types of coverage for those that are employed, or those that are providing individual coverage—there is just a plethora of different, developing, value-based purchasing approaches that don’t always use the same measures.

And at the end of the day we need to make sure that clinicians and providers are being asked to report on what is most useful to improve care as well as to allow for appropriate and justified accountability of those clinicians and providers. I think at the base of that we’ve got to have, basically, the same set of fundamental measures so that we’re not just collecting information that could end up being a lot of noise.