Chicago, IL – The Council of Medical Specialty Societies (CMSS) today announced the endorsement of the National Quality Strategy. The unanimous vote of endorsement occurred during the Council’s bi-annual business meeting at the 2013 CMSS Spring Meeting held earlier this month in Rosemont, IL.
The National Strategy for Quality Improvement in Health Care (the National Quality Strategy) sets a course for improving the quality of health and health care for all Americans. It serves as a blue print for health care stakeholders across the country – patients, providers, employers, health insurance companies, academic researchers, and local, State, and Federal governments – that helps prioritize quality improvement efforts, share lessons, and measure our collective success.
The initial National Quality Strategy, published in March 2011, established three aims and six priorities for quality improvement.
National Quality Strategy Aims and Priorities
National Quality Strategy’s three aims:
- Better Care: Improve the overall quality of care, by making health care more patient-centered, reliable, accessible, and safe.
- Healthy People/Healthy Communities: Improve the health of the U.S. population by supporting proven interventions to address behavioral, social, and environmental determinants of health in addition to delivering higher-quality care.
- Affordable Care: Reduce the cost of quality health care for individuals, families, employers, and government.
National Quality Strategy’s Six Priorities:
- Making care safer by reducing harm caused in the delivery of care.
- Ensuring that each person and family are engaged as partners in their care.
- Promoting effective communication and coordination of care.
- Promoting the most effective prevention and treatment practices for the leading causes of mortality, starting with cardiovascular disease.
- Working with communities to promote wide use of best practices to enable healthy living.
- Making quality care more affordable for individuals, families, employers, and governments by developing and spreading new health care delivery models.
“The feedback we received from our members and the Board was overwhelmingly in support of endorsement of the aims and priorities outlined in the annual report to Congress,” stated Dr. Norman Kahn, CMSS Executive Vice President and CEO. “The National Quality Strategy identifies ways to maximize resources to improve quality, align measures, and reduce duplication of efforts, which is aligned with one of the CMSS strategic priorities to facilitate a culture of performance improvement in medical practice.”
The entire report can be found at http://www.ahrq.gov/workingforquality/nqs/nqs2012annlrpt.pdf.
About CMSS Founded in 1965, CMSS was created to provide an independent forum for the discussion by medical specialists of issues of national interest and mutual concern. Today, CMSS represents thirty nine societies with an aggregate membership of more than 700,000 US physicians. Its main purpose is to provide a forum for collaboration to influence policy, medical education and accreditation from a broad, cross-specialty perspective. CMSS is the unified voice for specialty societies established to improve the United States’ healthcare system and health of the public. For more information visit CMSS at www.cmss.org.