On March 18, the National Quality Forum (NQF) released a draft report of Risk Adjustment for Socioeconomic Status or Other Sociodemographic Factors. The report contains eight recommendations, including the following:
- include sociodemographic factors when risk adjusting the performance score of outcome and process of care measures used in accountability applications, such as public reporting and pay-for-performance
- stratify performance measures according to sociodemographic factors to identify and reduce disparities
- make explicit NQF’s existing policy that performance measures are endorsed for specific contexts, i.e., for a specific patient population, data source, care setting, and level of analysis
Members are encouraged to submit comments on the draft recommendations directly to NQF by April 16. America’s Essential Hospitals will send a special update with more information on the draft report to members this week. Please contact Xiaoyi Huang, director of policy, at xhuang@essentialhospitals.org or 202.585.0127 with questions.
