The unfortunate reality is that there is no body of expertise with responsibility for addressing the science of performance measurement. The National Quality Forum (NQF) comes closest, and while it addresses some scientific issues when deciding whether to endorse a proposed measure, NQF is not mandated to explore broader issues to advance the science of measure development, nor does it have the financial support or structure to do so.
An infrastructure is needed to gain national consensus on: what to measure, how to define the measures, how to collect the data and survey for events, what is the accuracy of EHRs as a source of performance, the cost-effectiveness of various measures, how to reduce the costs of data collection, how to define thresholds for measures regarding their accuracy, and how to prioritize the measures collected (informed by the relative value of the information collected and the costs of data collection).
Despite this broad research agenda, there is little research funding to advance the basic science of performance measurement. Given the anticipated broad use of measures throughout the health system, funding can be a public/private partnership modeled after the Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute or a federally-funded initiative, perhaps centered at AHRQ. Given budgetary constraints, finding the funding to support the science of measurement will be a challenge. Yet, the costs of misapplication of measures and incorrect judgments about performance are substantial.
