News: AMGA endorses 14 quality and value reporting metrics

The American Medical Group Association (AMGA) has endorsed 14 metrics as a value and quality measurement set for data reporting in payer contracts, HealthLeaders Media reported.

Widespread adoption of the new measurement set would address the administrative burden and burnout associated with the current patchwork or reporting regimes, according to Jerry Penso, MD, MBA, president and chief executive officer of the AMGA.

“Our members told us that the burden of reporting the current quality measures was great; mainly, time to run the measures and time out of clinical practice for physicians to input the data,” he says.

The 14 measures feature both process measures such as cancer screening and outcome measures such as hospital readmission rates, HealthLeaders Media reported. The measures are:

• Emergency department use per 1,000
• Skilled nursing facility admissions per 1,000
• 30-day all cause hospital readmissions
• Admissions for acute ambulatory sensitive conditions composite
• Diabetes poor control
• Depression screening
• Diabetes eye exam
• High blood pressure control
• Consumer Assessment of Healthcare Providers and Systems (CAHPS), health status, and functional status
• Breast cancer screening
• Colorectal cancer screening
• Cervical cancer screening
• Pneumonia vaccination rate
• Pediatric well-child visits through age 15 months

According to Penso, a task force drawn from the AMGA’s Public Policy Committee used multiple criteria to select metrics for the new measurement set, HealthLeaders Media reported. The task force used seven selection criteria primarily:

• Measures had to be clinically relevant and impactful on patient lives
• Risk-adjustable measures were preferred
• Measures had to be evidence based, with scientific evidence of care improvement
• Claims-based measures were preferred because of the ability to report from claims data
• Track records were required—measures needed to demonstrate an ability to improve quality through past performance
• Measures that accounted for patient experience were preferred because a patient’s perception of care is an important outcome
• Metrics needed to have a large enough sample size to be statistically valid for performance comparisons

“Quality is important to all of us, our patients, our families, and our providers,” says Penso. “But our value measure set has other metrics that are important like utilization, cost, and patient safety.”

Editor’s note: This article originally appeared in HealthLeaders Media. To read the announcement from the AMGA, click here. To read about a recent study focused on physician burnout, click here.