Quality measurement and reporting in health care are crucial for identifying areas in need of improvement, monitoring progress, and providing consumers and purchasers with comparative information about health system performance. Although several measurement systems are used routinely to assess ambulatory, hospital, and long-term care, a systematic assessment of quality across spectrums of care is lacking. Spurred by rising costs and lagging quality improvement, large purchasers, health plans, and others have developed and implemented a variety of approaches that seek to reward high performance and create incentives for quality improvement. Efforts to improve and increase care measurement and align the incentives of providers through pay-for-performance programs are important building blocks in developing a health care system that performs more effectively and efficiently. Federal leadership is important to provide consistency to measurement and incentive systems so that the nation can gain the full value of these tools.
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