Opportunities for quality measurement to improve the value of care for patients with multiple chronic conditions.

Abstract

Quality measurement efforts have not historically focused on patients with multiple chronic conditions (MCCs), despite them comprising one quarter of the population and two thirds of health care spending. The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (ACA) creates several mechanisms for the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) to transform quality measurement into an organized enterprise designed to support clinicians caring for this vulnerable population. This article highlights 3 emerging policy opportunities for CMS to guide public and private quality measurement efforts for patients with MCCs. First, it discusses infusing an MCC framework into measure development to promote patient-centered, as opposed to single-disease-specific, performance measurement. Second, it describes the importance of using common performance measures for individual clinicians, hospitals, and communities to accelerate meaningful improvement in the prevention and management of chronic conditions across local populations. Finally, the need for longitudinal measurement as a foundation for sustained quality improvement is presented. The ACA's expansion of insurance access and portability necessitates collaborative alignment of chronic condition quality measurement efforts between public and private programs to develop a high-value lifelong health system.