Final Report for the National Quality Forum’s Measuring Home and Community-Based Services Quality Project Now Available

The final report for the National Quality Forum’s (NQF) Measuring Home and Community-Based Services Quality project is now posted on the HCBS Project Page. NQF, under a contract with the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), convened a multi-stakeholder committee to develop recommendations for the prioritization of measurement opportunities to address gaps in home and community-based services (HCBS) quality measurement. The report represents two years of work by the HCBS Committee and contains their final set of recommendations for how to advance quality measurement in home and community-based services.

The project involved:

the creation of a conceptual framework for measurement, including an operational definition of HCBS;
a synthesis of evidence and environmental scan for measures and measure concepts;
the identification of gaps in quality measurement based on the framework and scan; and
recommendations for prioritization in measurement.

“With the ongoing effort to shift government funding from institutional to community-based settings and the increasing demand for home and community-based services, it is important that we develop standardized measurement of the quality of these services,” said Edwin Walker, Acting Administrator of ACL. “We’re pleased with the progress on creating HCBS measures exemplified by this report and look forward to feedback from others, particularly as measures are tried and tested.”

The final report includes short-term recommendations on areas where there are existing measures or measure concepts that have been tested or could be tested in HCBS; intermediate recommendations on where there are existing measures or concepts that need more development; and long-term recommendations about areas that lack measures and concepts, requiring more research. Additionally, the report identifies gaps in HCBS quality measurement, describes challenges for measuring HCBS quality, and provides recommendations for prioritization in measurement.

For further reading, all project materials will be archived on NQF’s website under “Materials.”