Hospital Quality Alliance
Larry Gage, President of NAPH, serves as a principal member of the Hospital Quality Alliance (HQA), a national public-private partnership joining the organizations that represent America’s hospitals with other health care organizations to share information about hospital performance with the public and to support quality improvement efforts. HQA works closely with the National Quality Forum to endorse quality measures and with the federal Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services as measures are adopted.
NAPH’s participation in HQA is essential for representing the safety net hospital perspective and the mission of our hospitals to care for low-income and underserved patients. Over the past year HQA continues to evaluate potential measures and how hospital performance data will be displayed the Hospital Compare website, CMS’s chief vehicle for disseminating hospital quality information. HQA continues to encourage r measure harmonization and the better alignment of CMS’s new inpatient rules. With the intense interest in health reform in Congress and the Administration, HQA also supports efforts to ensure that health reform activities include a focus on quality improvement.