In September 2004, the IOM launched the Redesigning Health Insurance Performance Measures, Payment, and Performance Improvement Project in response to two congressional mandates in the Medicare Prescription Drug, Improvement, and Modernization Improvement Act of 2003 (Public Law 108-173, section 109).
The committee empaneled by the IOM to carry out this project is producing three reports for Congress, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, and other public and private purchasers on strategies for accelerating the diffusion and pace of quality improvement efforts in the United States.
Each of these reports, known collectively as the Pathways to Quality Health Care series, is focused on a specific policy approach to improving the quality of health care:
- measurement and reporting of performance data,
- payment incentives, and
- quality improvement initiatives.
The first report in the Pathways series, Performance Measurement: Accelerating Improvement, focuses on the selection of measures to support the quality improvement efforts of a diverse set of stakeholders, and on the creation of a common infrastructure for guiding and managing a consistent set of such measures nationally and regionally.
Succeeding reports, released in 2006, address payment incentive strategies that incorporate these measures and offer an evaluation of the Quality Improvement Organizations that work under contracts with Medicare.