The following report/blog was developed by Evelyn Gallego. (See extended entry for background.)
The HIT Standards Committee formed three subgroups to focus on the critical areas of: Clinical Operations, Clinical Quality (including quality reporting), and Privacy and Security. Of particular interest is the clinical quality group that is reviewing the endorsed quality measures and standardizing an implementable list to be be incorporated in HIT systems for quality measurement and public reporting.
In parallel, the NQF has already convened such a group—the Health Information Technology Expert Panel (HITEP). For the past two years, HITEP has actively reviewed the data types that need to be captured within electronic health records and the clinical workflow needed for effective and efficient quality measurement.
In light of all the work that I expect is happening behind the scenes a few thoughts come to mind:

• The HIT Standards Committee did not provide further information on how the Clinical Quality subgroup would collaborate with or build on the work currently conducted by HITEP. This needs to be resolved.
• Current quality measures tend to focus on patient-clinician interactions at the point of care not outcomes over an episode of care. With promise of HIT, it makes sense to add measures for a patients’ experience following an episode of care and capture data next appointment, patient entries to PHR, or via surveys on mobile phones. While it is important to measure EHR implementation & adoption, it is of greater value to the patient (or consumer) to see care quality information (experience and outcome).
• While providing consumers comparative information about providers to enable more informed decision making should help to improve health care, successful adoption and use is equally important. Doing so requires addressing how consumers will be informed about these reports, how they will access them, how they will understand them, and how they will act upon the information provided to make better healthcare decisions…not a trivial undertaking.

Background
With the advent of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA), two committees were created under the Federal Advisory Committee Act (FACA): Health IT Policy Committee and Health IT Standards Committee. The HIT Policy Committee advises the National Coordinator for Health IT on the policies and strategies for developing a national health information infrastructure. The HIT Standards Committee will execute on the guidelines provided by the HIT Policy Committee to recommend to the National Coordinator for Health IT the standards, implementation specifications, and certification criteria required for the electronic exchange and use of health information.