Three Factors Driving Misalignment of Healthcare Quality Measures

​To better align healthcare quality measures, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) should direct the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services to comprehensively plan development of more meaningful quality measures, said the U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) on October 13, 2016. Misalignment occurs when healthcare payers require providers to report measures that focus on different quality issues or define measures using different specifications. The full extent of misalignment among healthcare quality measures is unknown, GAO said, but it can have adverse effects on efforts to improve quality of care. GAO interviewed HHS officials and experts and found three interrelated factors driving the misalignment of quality measures. First, decision making is dispersed, because each entity independently decides which quality measures should be used and which specifications should apply.