A new plan to fund local organizations to assess and report on providers' quality of care performance was announced Wednesday by U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Michael Leavitt.
Part of Leavitt's Value-Driven Health Care Initiative, the Value Exchanges program intends to improve healthcare value and quality at the local level. "This plan is about giving consumers good information to make decisions about their healthcare, and giving providers information to help them improve care," Leavitt said in a press release.
Organizations participating in collaborative efforts to publicly report provider care quality will be chartered as designated Value Exchanges under the initiative. HHS is now accepting initial applications from eligible groups, which are limited to independent, local, not-for-profit organizations. Leavitt hopes the program will bring these local groups into a national system, inspiring additional collaborations to form.
In addition to Value Exchanges, some unfunded collaborative efforts will be recognized as Community Leaders within the plan. Less developed than Value Exchanges, Community Leaders will typically aim to increase stakeholder participation and quality assessment capacity.
Value Exchanges will adhere to nationally-recognized standards for quality and value in their reporting on provider performance. Carolyn Clancy, MD, director of the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality - the group administering the program - said that providers themselves would lead in developing the quality standards.
"The goal is to achieve both national coordination in developing standards and local control in applying them," Leavitt said. "The federal government can help organize – but providers, purchasers and consumers themselves must be in charge and make the system work."
Additionally, the Value Exchanges program would likely bolster efforts made to meet President Bush's "four cornerstones" for healthcare transparency, which are:
• Providing costs of health services in advance to patients
• Providing incentives for quality care at competitive prices
• Adopting healthcare IT standards
• Reporting quality of care