New NQF Measures Target Health Disparities, Cultural Sensitivity to Care

The National Quality Forum has endorsed the collection of 12 quality measures to better understand health care disparities and the degree of culturally competent care given across racial and ethnic minority populations.


The National Quality Forum has endorsed the collection of 12 quality measures to better understand health care disparities and the degree of culturally competent care given across racial and ethnic minority populations.

The goal is to take a first step in putting meaningful metrics in place to measure disparities, according to NQF. The forum commissioned a paper on measurement concepts from Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Medical School, which was completed in September 2011 and served as the foundation for selecting the measures now endorsed.

NQF evaluated 16 measures against its endorsement criteria and selected these 12:

* 1888: Workforce development measure derived from the workforce development domain of the Communication Climate Assessment Toolkit (CCAT) (American Medical Association)

* 1901: Performance evaluation measure derived from the performance evaluation domain of the Communication Climate Assessment Toolkit (CCAT) (American Medical Association)

* 1905: Leadership commitment measure derived from the leadership commitment domain of the Communication Climate Assessment Toolkit (CCAT) (American Medical Association)

* 1892: Individual engagement measure derived from the individual engagement domain of CCAT (American Medical Association)

* 1894: Cross-cultural communication measure derived from the cross-cultural communication domain of the CCAT (American Medical Association)

* 1896: Language services measure derived from the language services domain of CCAT (American Medical Association)

* 1898: Health literacy measure derived from the health literacy domain of CCAT (American Medical Association)

* 1902: Clinicians/Groups’ Health Literacy Practices Based on the CAHPS® Item Set for Addressing Health Literacy (AHRQ)

* 1904: Clinician/Group’s Cultural Competence Based on the CAHPS® Cultural Competence Item Set (AHRQ)

* 1821: L2: Patients receiving language services supported by qualified language services providers (Department of Health Policy, The George Washington University)

* 1824: L1A: Screening for preferred spoken language for health care (Department of Health Policy, The George Washington University)

* 1919: Cultural Competency Implementation Measure (RAND)

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