The National Partnership for Women & Families, a powerful voice for consumers in the health care reform debate, today joined Stand for Quality in announcing support for six recommendations that can help improve the quality and affordability of care for all patients. This unique partnership of patient and consumer groups; employers and public purchasers; representatives of nurses, physicians and other clinicians; health plans; hospitals and others is working to link essential efforts to expand coverage to measuring and improving the quality and affordability of care. Its recommendations to Congress and the Obama Administration are to:

• Set national priorities and provide coordination for quality improvement;
• Endorse and maintain national standard measures;
• Develop measures to fill gaps in priority areas;
• Enhance effective consultative processes so stakeholders can inform policies on use of measures;
• Collect, analyze, and make performance information available and actionable;
• Support a sustainable infrastructure for quality improvement.

“When it comes to health care, cost, quality and coverage are inextricably linked,” said National Partnership for Women & Families President Debra L. Ness. “In the United States today, millions of patients are not getting the care they need or, worse, getting care that actually makes them sicker. Americans today have about a 50/50 chance of getting the right care, for the right reason, at the right time. We have to do better and we can, if we measure the quality of care and report the results, so consumers can make informed decisions. As we improve the quality of care, we will generate the resources needed to cover more people.”

Stand for Quality’s Building a Foundation for High Quality, Affordable Health Care: Linking Performance Measurement to Health Reform puts us on a path toward more patient-centered care and more effective use of our health care resources. The recommendations build on existing improvement efforts and aim to harness the energies of the public and private sectors to strengthen health care quality. Stand for Quality is calling on the public and private sectors to come together to measure performance and use those results to drive continuous improvement. Measurement and reporting of health care services are crucial to achieving the essential goals of reform quality, affordability, and access for all.

In addition to Ness, Stand for Quality Steering Committee Members include: Janet Corrigan, President and Chief Executive Officer, National Quality Forum; Karen Ignagni, President and Chief Executive Officer, America’s Health Insurance Plans; Charles N. Kahn, III, President, Federation of American Hospitals; Peter V. Lee, Executive Director for National Health Policy, Pacific Business Group on Health; Mark B. McClellan, Director, Engelberg Center for Health Care Reform at the Brookings Institution and Leonard D. Schaeffer Chair in Health Policy Studies; Nancy H. Nielsen, President, American Medical Association; Kenneth W. Porter, Senior Vice President, American Benefits Council; William L. Roper, Dean, UNC School of Medicine, Vice Chancellor for Medical Affairs and CEO, UNC Healthcare System; John C. Rother, Executive Vice President, Policy and Strategy, AARP; Gerald M. Shea, Assistant to the President for Governmental Affairs, AFL-CIO; Linda J. Stierle, Chief Executive Officer, American Nurses Association; John Tooker, Executive Vice President and Chief Executive Officer of the American College of Physicians; Richard J. Umbdenstock, President and Chief Executive Officer, American Hospital Association, Anthony Wisniewski, Executive Director, Health Care Policy, U.S. Chamber of Commerce.