title: Setting standards at the forefront of delivery system reform: aligning care coordination quality measures for multiple chronic conditions.
abstract: The primary study objective is to assess how three major health reform care coordination initiatives (Accountable Care Organizations, Independence at Home, and Community-Based Care Transitions) measure concepts critical to care coordination for people with multiple chronic conditions. We find that there are major differences in quality measurement across these three large and politically important programs. Quality measures currently used or proposed for these new health reform-related programs addressing care coordination primarily capture continuity of care. Other key areas of care coordination, such as care transitions, patient-centeredness, and cross-cutting care across multiple conditions are infrequently addressed. The lack of a comprehensive and consistent measure set for care coordination will pose challenges for healthcare providers and policy makers who seek, respectively, to provide and reward well-coordinated care. In addition, this heterogeneity in measuring care coordination quality will generate new information, but will inhibit comparisons between these care coordination programs.
authors.affiliation: Department of Health Policy and Management at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health in Baltimore, MD, USA. edugoff@jhsph.edu
authors.forename: Eva H
authors.initials: EH
authors.lastname: DuGoff
authors.forename: Sydney
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Dy
authors.forename: Erin R
authors.initials: ER
authors.lastname: Giovannetti
authors.forename: Bruce
authors.initials: B
authors.lastname: Leff
authors.forename: Cynthia M
authors.initials: CM
authors.lastname: Boyd
mesh_terms: D002908:Chronic Disease / Q000628:therapy*; D019033:Delivery of Health Care, Integrated / Q000592:standards*; D018166:Health Care Reform; D006801:Humans; D058991:Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act; D019984:Quality Indicators, Health Care; D014481:United States
keywords: care coordination; chronic disease; quality measurement