CHIPRA Pediatric Quality Measures Program

This is the dedicated home for information on the development and enhancement of children's health care quality measures as directed under CHIPRA. It is a resource for policymakers, advocates, consumers, and purchasers of children's health care; providers; researchers; and all others interested in the process of identifying valid, reliable, and feasible quality measures for children's health care.

Contents

Background
Process
Centers of Excellence
Publications by Centers of Excellence
Contact Us

Background

Established under CHIPRA Section 401(b), the Pediatric Quality Measures Program (PQMP) is intended to:

1. Improve and strengthen the initial core set of children's health care quality measures.
2. Expand on existing pediatric quality measures used by public and private health care purchasers and advance the development of such new and emerging quality measures.
3. Increase the portfolio of evidence-based, consensus pediatric quality measures available to public and private purchasers of children's health care services, providers, and consumers.

The PQMP comprises:

• Seven CHIPRA Pediatric Healthcare Quality Measures Program Centers of Excellence (CoE) supported with cooperative agreement grants with AHRQ, funded by the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS).
• A CHIPRA Coordinating and Technical Assistance Center (CTAC), under contract with RTI International.
• Two CHIPRA quality demonstration project grantees (Illinois, a partner to the Florida grantee, and Massachusetts) funded by CMS that are undertaking new quality measure development as part of their demonstration grants.
• Expert panels that will review measures nominated through a public call for measures, as well as measures developed or enhanced by CoEs, and make recommendations for an improved core set of children's health care quality measures.

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Process

The work of the PQMP will culminate in the annual posting of improved core sets of children's health care quality measures for voluntary use by State Medicaid and CHIP programs, private sector insurers, providers, families, and patients beginning on January 1, 2013. These improved core sets will be drawn from measures nominated through a public call for measures, as well as measures developed and enhanced by the CoEs. An expert panel will use defined criteria to evaluate all measures before recommending them to AHRQ and CMS for posting as part of an improved core set of measures.

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Centers of Excellence

AHRQ has made seven awards to Centers of Excellence (CoE) across the United States. Each CoE has a broad coalition of consumer stakeholders, health services researchers, and State agency partners to inform its work. Each CoE will develop or enhance five to six pediatric quality measures and test the performance of those measures against specific criteria identified in the CHIPRA legislation.

A list of the priority topics being addressed by the Centers of Excellence is available.

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Publications by Centers of Excellence

New publications from the CoEs are available, as follows:

• National Quality Measures for Child Mental Health Care: Background, Progress, and Next Steps/em>
  http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23457148.
• Pediatric Readmission Prevalence and Variability Across Hospitals
  http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23340639.
• Quality Measurements in Pediatrics: What Do They Assess?
  http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23147673.

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Contact Us

If you have questions or comments about the PQMP, or would like to join a mailing list to be informed about future calls for experts, calls for measures, or measure news, please Email: chipra@ahrq.hhs.gov.

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