title: Metrics That Matter.
abstract: Increasingly, performance metrics are seen as key components for accurately measuring and improving health care value. Disappointment in the ability of chosen metrics to meet these goals is exemplified in a recent Institute of Medicine report that argues for a consensus-building process to determine a simplified set of reliable metrics. Overall health care goals should be defined and then metrics to measure these goals should be considered. If appropriate data for the identified goals are not available, they should be developed. We use examples from our work in the Veterans Health Administration (VHA) on validating waiting time and mental health metrics to highlight other key issues for metric selection and implementation. First, we focus on the need for specification and predictive validation of metrics. Second, we discuss strategies to maintain the fidelity of the data used in performance metrics over time. These strategies include using appropriate incentives and data sources, using composite metrics, and ongoing monitoring. Finally, we discuss the VA's leadership in developing performance metrics through a planned upgrade in its electronic medical record system to collect more comprehensive VHA and non-VHA data, increasing the ability to comprehensively measure outcomes.
authors.affiliation: Health Care Financing and Economics, VA Boston Healthcare System, 150 S. Huntington Avenue, Mailstop 152H, Boston, MA, 02130, USA. Julia.Prentice@va.gov.|Boston University School of Medicine, Boston, MA, USA. Julia.Prentice@va.gov.|Boston University School of Public Health, Boston, MA, USA. Julia.Prentice@va.gov.
authors.forename: Julia C
authors.initials: JC
authors.lastname: Prentice
authors.affiliation: Health Care Financing and Economics, VA Boston Healthcare System, 150 S. Huntington Avenue, Mailstop 152H, Boston, MA, 02130, USA.|Boston University School of Medicine, Boston, MA, USA.|Boston University School of Public Health, Boston, MA, USA.|Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, Boston, MA, USA.
authors.forename: Austin B
authors.initials: AB
authors.lastname: Frakt
authors.affiliation: Health Care Financing and Economics, VA Boston Healthcare System, 150 S. Huntington Avenue, Mailstop 152H, Boston, MA, 02130, USA.|Northeastern University, Boston, MA, USA.
authors.forename: Steven D
authors.initials: SD
authors.lastname: Pizer
mesh_terms: D057286:Electronic Health Records / Q000592:standards / Q000706:statistics & numerical data*; D006297:Health Services Accessibility / Q000592:standards / Q000706:statistics & numerical data*; D006801:Humans; D014481:United States; D014493:United States Department of Veterans Affairs / Q000592:standards / Q000706:statistics & numerical data*; D058014:Veterans Health / Q000592:standards / Q000706:statistics & numerical data*
keywords: access to care metrics; mental health metrics; metric implementation; metric validation; veterans