Tips for selecting performance measures:

• Involve a broadly representative group of stakeholders so that measures reflect a spectrum of concerns including clinical care, quality of life, member satisfaction, functional status, access to services, adherence to evidence-based practices and system outcomes.
  
  
• Whenever possible, use nationally standardized and tested performance measures.  Several national initiatives have developed core quality measures for Medicaid and Medicare (CMS core measures).  Some of these are voluntary, others are mandatory, and many are still evolving. Most, however, focus on primary and acute care.  States frequently use their assessment and experience of care survey instruments as the basis for developing more functional and quality of life relevant to LTSS.
  
  
• Review and incorporate performance measures that are required as a condition of the federal authority(ies) under which your MLTSS program was approved.
  
  
• Minimize the burden of new data collection efforts by selecting performance measures with existing and credible data sources.  Make maximum use of hospital discharge data, assessment data from nursing facilities and home health/home care agencies, and licensure information.
  
  
• Select performance measures that are actionable by your MLTSS program or in coordination with others.  MLTSS programs express understandable frustration about being measured for outcomes that they do not control or which are outside the scope of their contracts.
  
  
• Think about how and when you plan to use performance measures as you develop them.  Think about both short-cycle and longer-term measures and how you will use them to manage your program, improve your system, and incentivize and reward your contractors and/or providers.
  
  
• Be very prudent in the number of performance measures you collect. 

 

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