New voluntary standards available for ambulatory care

AORN Journal,  Oct, 2005  

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The National Quality Forum (NQF) has endorsed a set of national voluntary consensus standards for gauging and publicly reporting the quality of ambulatory care, according to an Aug 4, 2005, news release from the NQF. The standards are physician-focused and represent a consensus of more than 260 health care providers, consumer groups, professional associations, purchasers, federal agencies, and research and quality improvement organizations.

These consensus standards represent measures of structure, process, and outcome that have been linked by evidence to quality of care for ambulatory care settings. Each measure was evaluated against NQF-endorsed evaluation criteria of importance, scientific soundness, feasibility, and usability. The NQF board of directors approved 36 performance measures and three recommendations that have special legal standing as voluntary consensus standards. The approved measures address asthma/respiratory illness; behavioral health/depression; bone conditions; heart disease, including coronary artery disease and heart failure; hypertension; prenatal care; and prevention, immunization, and screening.

National Quality Forum Endorses Voluntary Consensus Standards for Standardizing Measures of Physician-focused Ambulatory Care (news release, Washington, DC: National Quality Forum, Aug 4, 2005) http://www.prnewswire.com (accessed 5 Aug 2005).

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