About PHCQA:
Mission & Goals
The mission of the Pennsylvania Health Care Quality Alliance (PHCQA) is to improve the quality of patient health by encouraging the use of measures that will help providers to evaluate and improve the quality of their patient care, enable consumers to access and compare provider performance, and help insurers evaluate the performance of their provider networks.
We aim to achieve these goals by:
- Creating a uniform, statewide approach to transparency and performance measurement that is fair and valid.
- Utilizing measures that are evidence-based and actionable, and that enable alignment across medical conditions and settings of care.
- Building on state, federal, and private data sources and measures, as appropriate.
- Utilizing methods of measurement, data collection, and reporting that are statistically sound and not unreasonably burdensome to capture or report.
History
Founded in January 2007, PHCQA originally began as an unincorporated association focused on developing alignment and agreement between payers and providers on hospital quality measures for accountability and performance assessment.
The first PHCQA Progress and Performance Report on hospital quality was published in March 2008 and in October 2008 became one of only 3 states to make 'all-or-none' composite scores of hospital performance (Appropriate Care Scores) available on a public website. In December of 2008, PHCQA formally incorporated as a Pennsylvania nonprofit organization.
In 2009 and 2010, PHCQA continued to work on enhancing and updating measures as additional consensus-based definitions of health care quality measures and standards were developed. PHCQA also supported various statewide quality improvement efforts via its online infrastructure (data portal and performance reporting).
In 2011, PHCQA positioned itself to begin reporting ambulatory care measures and expand its membership base. It also continued to support hospitals as they prepare for value-based purchasing and focus on reducing hospital-acquired conditions.
