Health care quality measurement is the use of measures to assess a change in quality.

“If you can’t measure it, you can’t improve it.” (Peter Drucker)

You want the best possible health care for you and your loved ones. Measuring performance of health care providers compared with best practices helps the provider know where they can improve, and you can review their performance via public reporting.

Quality measures are standards for measuring the performance and improvement of population health or of health plans, providers of services, and other clinicians in the delivery of health care services. They are tools that help us measure or quantify health care processes, outcomes, patient perceptions, and organizational structure and/or systems that are associated with the ability to provide high-quality health care and/or that relate to one or more quality goals for health care.

Each quality measure focuses on an aspect of health care delivery, and together quality measures and quality measurement provide a more comprehensive picture of the quality of health care. Quality measures address many parts of health care, including

• Health outcomes
• Clinical processes
• Patient safety
• Efficient use of health care resources
• Care coordination
• Patient engagement in their own care
• Patient perceptions of their care
• Population and public health
   

A quality measure has several parts. At a minimum, a quality measure has

• A title and description of what the measure is.
• Denominator: defines the population being measured. It could be the whole population or a subset.
• Numerator (also called the measure focus): describes the target process, condition, event, or outcome expected for the targeted population.

Some measures also have numerator and/or denominator exclusions and/or denominator exceptions, as well as other components. For more information, see the Measure Specification Overview.