Organizing Quality Measures by Disease or Condition

Research indicates that consumers are more interested in measures that are clearly related to a disease or condition that they have, or that a loved one has.^[1] A large number of measures are disease-specific. If most or all of the measures you are considering are disease-specific, then you should consider this approach.

Advantages of Categorizing by Disease or Condition

• Consumers who are trying to decide on a hospital, physician, or other provider for a particular condition will be interested in these measures.
• Consumers will appreciate that you have made it easy for them to get right to the information they want and need.
• Organizing by disease or condition makes it easy to provide useful information about the disease or condition in your report or through a resource list or links.

Disadvantages of Categorizing by Disease or Condition

• Consumers, especially those who do not have a particular disease or condition they are concerned about, are also very interested in measures that are cross-cutting, such as patient experience measures.
• If you have information about performance with respect to some diseases and conditions, but not about others, people can become disappointed that “their” disease is excluded.

EXAMPLE: Comparing Doctors' Office by Area of Care

Some sponsors structure their reporting program so that they can issue a series of reports, each with a focus on a specific disease, condition, or procedure. The Pennsylvania Health Care Cost Containment Council, for example, has produced reports on topics that include breast cancer surgery, cancer surgery volume, cardiac care, chronic health conditions, diabetes, knee and hip replacements, and orthopedic surgery.

Also in "Organizing Measures To Reduce Information Overload"

• Using Composites
• Organizing Measures by Quality Domain
• Organizing Measures by Disease or Condition
• Organizing Measures by Type
• Organizing Measures by Data Source