The National Quality Forum has formed a standing committee to address healthcare disparities.
Here are seven things to know about the committee.
1. The group, called the Disparities Standing Committee, will focus on reducing and eventually eliminating disparities through quality measurement.
2. The committee will be a resource for all NQF activities, including measure evaluation, selection, recommended use and improvement.
3. The committee will provide guidance to the Consensus Standards Approval Committee, Measure Applications Partnership, NQF Standing Committees and the NQF Board of Directors.
4. A key focus of the committee will be to review implementation of the revised NQF policy on risk adjustment for socioeconomic status and related demographic factors.
5. The DSC will evaluate the two-year trial period that is testing this policy change. The committee will ultimately assess any emerging evidence of the impact of socioeconomic status-adjusted measures on patients and providers. The committee will report its findings to the NQF board in 2017, after the socioeconomic status trial has concluded.
6. Committee members include:
- Marshall Chin, MD (co-chairman) — University of Chicago
- Ninez Ponce, PhD (co-chairman) — UCLA Fielding School of Public Health; UCLA Center for Health Policy Research
- Philip Alberti, PhD — Association of American Medical Colleges
- Susannah Bernheim, MD — Yale-New Haven (Conn.) Hospital Center for Outcomes Research & Evaluation
- Michelle Cabrera — SEIU California
- J. Emilio Carrillo, MD — NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital; Weill Cornell Medical College
- Lisa Cooper, MD — Johns Hopkins Center to Eliminate Cardiovascular Disparities; Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine (Baltimore)
- Ronald Copeland, MD — Kaiser Permanente (Oakland, Calif.)
- Jose Escarce, MD, PhD – David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA; UCLA Fielding School of Public Health
- Traci Ferguson, MD — WellCare Health Plans (Tampa, Fla.)
- Kevin Fiscella, MD — University of Rochester (N.Y.)
- Nancy Garrett, PhD — Hennepin County Medical Center (Minneapolis)
- Romana Hasnain-Wynia PhD — Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute
- Lisa Iezzoni, MD — Mongan Institute for Health Policy; Harvard Medical School (Boston)
- David Nerenz, PhD — Henry Ford Health System (Detroit)
- Yolanda Ogbolu, PhD — University of Maryland Baltimore, School of Nursing
- Robert Rauner, MD — Partnership for a Healthy Lincoln
- Eduardo Sanchez, MD — American Heart Association
- Sarah Hudson Scholle, MD, DrPH — National Committee for Quality Assurance
- Thomas Sequist, MD — Partners HealthCare (Boston)
- Christie Teigland, PHD — Inovalon (Bowie, Md.)
- Mara Youdelman — National Health Law Program
7. The committee begins its work Dec. 3.
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