NQF roadmap looks to eliminate healthcare disparities
The National Quality Foundation (NQF) recently released a roadmap that lays out four actions healthcare systems and payers can take to reduce disparities.
Healthcare disparities are often caused by social, economic, and environmental factors. The NQF roadmap, titled The Four I’s for Health Equity, states that performance measures can help monitor these disparities and determine whether initiatives focused on reducing them are effective. The roadmap aims to demonstrate this concept.
The roadmap urges healthcare organizations to focus on the following four actions to promote fairness in healthcare and reduce disparities:
- Identify and prioritize the reduction of health disparities. This step involves determining how prevalent the disparity is and what the gap is between groups with risk factors and groups with high quality ratings for a given performance measure. Examines the link between performance and outcomes and determine whether the measure is actionable.
- Implement evidence-based interventions. Don’t just document potential interventions, implement them. Establish educational programs and engage community health workers.
- Invest in health equity performance measures. There are five domains by which health equity can be measured to help determine progress toward ending healthcare disparity (see the roadmap for a complete list).
- Incentivize the reduction of health disparities and achievement of health equity. Consider reporting the results of measures related to health disparities to promote transparency and help address issues.
The NQF roadmap also includes a list of 10 recommendations for how healthcare organizations and payers can collect data and measure outcomes to further focus on health equity. The roadmap was developed with the support of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services along with stakeholders, including payers, providers, consumers, and patients.