The Quality Alliance Steering Committee (QASC) Work Groups help focus attention on the particular goals set forth by the Steering Committee. Information about each work group is listed below, along with the names of the chairperson(s). If you have any questions regarding the work groups, please send an e-mail indicating your interest to  Niall Brennan or Cindy Chen of the Engelberg Center for Health Care Reform at the Brookings Institution.

Expansion Work Group 

• Chaired by: Peter Lee, PBGH
• This work group focuses on expanding the number and scope of AQA pilot sites. It is working on developing a plan for expansion that includes both ambulatory and hospital care that can facilitate assessing quality across episodes of care. The Expansion Work Group is currently developing criteria that will be used for selection and prioritization of additional sites for pilot expansion.

Measure Harmonization Work Group 

• Chaired by: Janet Corrigan, NQF
• This work group focuses on identifying measures where measure specifications are different and is currently developing a plan to reconcile measurement specifications/definitions across ambulatory and hospital settings. This plan includes methods/processes for on-going harmonization of measures across settings as well as a way to refresh the measures and retire them.

Infrastructure Work Group

• Chaired by: Chris Querum, Wisconsin Collaborative for Healthcare
• This work group focuses on identifying ways in which to provide structural support to the pilot sites. This group is investigating existing avenues such as QIOs, contractor, and local support to possibly help sustain the pilot sites. In addition, this group is developing a plan to track and provide ongoing evaluation of the pilot sites. Data collection and aggregation are some of the areas being included in the plan.

Episodes of Care Work Group

• Co-Chaired by: Kevin Weiss, Northwestern University and Gregg Meyer, Partners
• This work group focuses on developing a comprehensive approach to efficiency that includes examination of the overall system, group and individual physician. In order to get at the issue of efficiency, episodes of care are being evaluated. This work group is developing a plan to evaluate episodes of care and efficiency of services as well as primary responsibilities for the care provided i.e., system, physician, or jointly between physician and system.

Cost-Pricing Transparency Work Group

• Co-Chaired by: Debra Ness, National Partnership for Women & Families and Bruce Bradley, GM
• This work group focuses on the costs of care and reporting the costs/price of care to the public. The group is investigating what the issues surrounding reporting costs/pricing to consumers are as well as developing a plan to implement reporting in these areas.

Vision Work Group

• Co-Chaired by: Carmella Bocchino, AHIP and Bob Dickler, Association of American Medical Colleges
• This work group focuses on ways to achieve the overall vision statement of the QASC to advance a high quality, cost effective, patient-centered heath-care system through the coordination of the various groups that are working to provide public information on health-care provider performance.

Measure Implementation Strategy Work Group

• This work group provides overall strategic guidance on implementing methods for securely and consistently aggregating claims and other electronic data from public and private sources, so that NQF- and Quality Alliance-endorsed measures of the quality and cost of health care can be constructed more efficiently and consistently. The initial focus will be on AQA/NQF-endorsed ambulatory quality measures, with the goal of expanding the national measurement and reporting activities to more endorsed measures as feasible.