The Core Quality Measures Collaborative

The American Academy of Family Physicians Academy (AAFP) has participated in the Core Quality Measures Collaborative (the Collaborative) since August 2014. The Collaborative is a public and private, multi-stakeholder effort working to define core measure sets for various specialties, promoting alignment and harmonization of measures. This effort exists to decrease practice burden and cost by reducing variability in measure selection, specifications, implementation, and reporting—making quality measurement more useful and meaningful for patients, employers, payers, and clinicians. With significant input from the AAFP, the Accountable Care Organizations and Patient Centered Medical Home/Primary Care Core Measure Set  was developed for primary care. The goal of this set is to decrease burden and allow for more congruence between public and private payer programs.

Access a full list of the all specialty core measure set.(www.cms.gov)

Reducing Administrative Burden on Family Medicine

Administrative burden takes time away from direct patient care, and increases health care costs and physician workloads. Reducing that burden is a top priority of the AAFP. More than 60% of family physicians have contracts with seven or more payers, and are responsible for reporting different quality measure sets to each payer.

The AAFP advocates that all public and private payers use the ACO and PCMH / Primary Care Core Measure Set in all programs where quality measures are reported by family physicians, or where measures are used for accountability or payment purposes.

Implementation and Adoption by Payers

The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) and private health plans have committed to phasing in the core measure sets(www.cms.gov). Ongoing monitoring will enable the Collaborative to fill measure gaps, and replace existing measures with more meaningful measures as they become available.