Oklahoma Foundation for Medical Quality (OFMQ) announced it was awarded contracts totaling $1.5 million to advance the use of quality measures for evaluating hospital performance and assist Medicare in redesigning its payment system.  The OKC-based non-profit health care consulting organization will employ clinicians, data analysts and quality improvement experts to perform the work, which will be used on a national level to improve health care quality. 

OFMQ will provide clinical, statistical and analytic expertise to the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) in a demonstration project supporting the government’s value-based purchasing (VBP) strategy.  VBP aims to transform Medicare’s payment system from one that pays providers for quantity of services to one that links payment more directly to the quality of care.  The Deficit Reduction Act of 2005 mandates CMS implement VBP in the hospital setting by 2009.     

Separately, OFMQ completed development of the first-ever set of quality measures for hospital outpatient settings, including emergency rooms, hospital-affiliated clinics, and ambulatory surgery facilities.  Under its latest agreement with CMS, OFMQ will lead the next phase of implementation for these measures, to include developing an expert advisory panel, ensuring the measures stay consistent with the latest scientific knowledge and working with the National Quality Forum (NQF), the principal body that endorses national healthcare performance measures and standards.  The hospital outpatient measures are also federally mandated through The Tax Relief and Health Care Act of 2006. 

“We are pleased to continue this important work with CMS in the move toward greater accountability and transparency in health care,” said Claudette Greenway, RN, MBA, and Chief Operations Officer at OFMQ.  “OFMQ continues to grow our expertise in this area, and Oklahoma is contributing to health care quality improvement in our nation’s hospitals in a significant way through this work,” she said.  

Oklahoma Foundation for Medical Quality has worked in measures development on a national level since its first such contract in 1999.  OFMQ also works locally with hospitals, doctors, home health agencies and nursing homes on quality improvement programs that directly impact Oklahoma’s health care consumers.