Performance measures: are we measuring what matters?
BACKGROUND
The ultimate intent of healthcare performance measures is to improve health status by stimulating improvements to healthcare quality. This report evaluates how well current performance measurement sets address the leading causes of illness and death in the United States, using the Health Plan Employer Data and Information Set (HEDIS) as an example.


METHODS
We assessed whether HEDIS measures exist for the leading causes of illness and death according to five commonly used indices: physiologic cause of death, underlying cause of death, disability-adjusted life years, healthcare expenditures, and missed work days.


RESULTS
Fewer than one half of the leading causes of morbidity and mortality are addressed by current measures.


CONCLUSIONS
The opportunities for using accurate and meaningful measurement for disease prevention and health promotion are substantial, yet this potential remains only partly realized and depends on further expansion of performance measurement efforts.
Thompson
B L
BL
Division of Prevention Research and Analytic Methods, Epidemiology Program Office, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Atlanta, Georgia 20241, USA. blthompson@cdc.gov
Harris
J R
JR
D002423:Cause of Death; D004185:Disability Evaluation; D006264:Health Benefit Plans, Employee / Q000592:standards; D005102:Health Expenditures; D006801:Humans; D011785:Quality Assurance, Health Care / Q000379:methods*; D019984:Quality Indicators, Health Care; D019057:Quality-Adjusted Life Years; D018582:Sick Leave; D014481:United States