ALEXANDRIA, Va.--(BUSINESS WIRE)-- The Academy of Managed Care Pharmacy (AMCP) has been appointed as a voting organizational member of the National Quality Forum’s (NQF’s) Measure Applications Partnership (MAP) Coordinating Committee. AMCP Executive Director Judith Cahill will represent the Academy on the Committee. In this role, Cahill will help bring together stakeholders to provide input to the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) on the selection of measures for use in public reporting and performance-based payments programs of public health programs.
“It is an honor to be selected to participate on such prestigious committee,” says Cahill. “The work that we are about to embark on will provide a consistent set of measurements from which patients and payers can evaluate health care programs across the country.”
Formation of NQF’s MAP Coordinating Committee stems from the 2010 Affordable Care Act, which directs the HHS Secretary to seek multi-stakeholder input on the use of quality measures for public programs and assigns new duties to the consensus-based entity that holds a contract with HHS.
NQF currently serves as the consensus-based entity under HHS, and it anticipates being tasked by HHS to carry out this new duty through the MAP Coordinating Committee. Under the NQF-proposed structure, the Coordinating Committee would set the overall strategy for MAP and provide direction to the various stakeholder advisory workgroups. These workgroups would in turn advise the Coordinating Committee, as needed, on measures for specific types of programs. The Coordinating Committee would then be responsible for making recommendations to HHS within the framework of the HHS National Quality Strategy.
Criteria for inclusion of organizations in the MAP Coordinating Committee included the need to “represent leading stakeholder groups affected by the use of quality measures.” Additional criteria included having “demonstrated involvement and experience in quality measurement (e.g., development, endorsement, implementation, validation, methodological issues), as well as public reporting, and performance-based payment.”
AMCP fits these criteria and more through the work its staff and members have done in coordination with existing standards bodies to establish quality measures for the delivery of pharmacy benefits. In addition, managed care pharmacy is highly impacted by quality standards, as professionals in this field apply quality measures to their work on a daily basis.
“Managed care pharmacy brings valuable insight and experience to the task before NQF, in that virtually everything our profession does is based on evidence-based measurements,” Cahill says. “We look forward to helping develop national measures across the health care spectrum as a crucial step to improving the quality of health care for all Americans.”
The MAP Coordinating Committee will hold its first meeting in early March.
About AMCP
The Academy of Managed Care Pharmacy (AMCP) is a national professional association of pharmacists and other health care practitioners who serve society by the application of sound medication management principles and strategies to improve health care for all. The Academy's nearly 6,000 members develop and provide a diversified range of clinical, educational and business management services and strategies on behalf of the more than 200 million Americans covered by a managed care pharmacy benefit. More news and information about AMCP can be obtained on its website, at www.amcp.org. The Academy observed its 20th anniversary in 2009.
CONTACT:
Academy of Managed Care Pharmacy (AMCP)
Neal Learner, 703-683-8416 ext 608
[email protected]
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