AQA Meeting

Summary

Washington, DC
May 16, 2012

The AQA, formerly known as the Ambulatory Care Quality Alliance, met on May 16, 2012 in Washington, DC. The minutes from this meeting are below.

Introduction

The AQA, formerly known as the Ambulatory Care Quality Alliance, came together on May 16 for the first all-membership meeting of 2012. The meeting started off with updates from the AQA Steering Group around the strategic plan, governance, and finance. Participants also received updates from the working groups on (1) Measures and Improvement and (2) Reporting. They received updates on the work that the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS), the National Quality Forum (NQF), and the Quality Alliance Steering Committee are doing on measure endorsement, alignment, prioritization, and implementation and updates on the work of the NQF's Measure Applications Partnership and the CMS Technical Advisory Panel on the Assessment of CMS Quality Measures. Finally, participants heard presentations on three innovative approaches to care delivery.
The meeting was chaired by Carolyn Clancy, Director, Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ). Clancy welcomed participants and said that 2012 was starting with a new sense of purpose amid the evolving landscape of health care.
Clancy said that AHRQ recently released its annual health care disparities and quality reports. She said that, for the first time, the recently released reports contained chapters on care coordination and patient centeredness. Clancy highlighted the four key themes from the reports, which she said emphasize the need to accelerate progress:

Health care quality and access are suboptimal (especially for minority and low-income groups).
While quality is improving, access and disparities are barely moving at all.
There is urgent need to focus on reducing disparities.
Progress is uneven with respect to the eight national priority areas.

Clancy added that while there is some overall movement in the right direction, it is minimal in comparison to the rate of increase on health care spending. This is a disconnect that the public and policymakers are seeing, she said.