The updated 2009 Implementation Guide for the National Quality Forum (NQF) Endorsed Nursing-Sensitive Care Performance Measures provides detailed specifications for the 12 national voluntary consensus standards for nursing-sensitive care endorsed by the NQF. The Joint Commission is pleased to make this Guide publicly available for use by interested organizations.
Background
In January 2004, the National Quality Forum (NQF) endorsed a compilation of nursing-sensitive care performance measures. The measures were identified through the NQF consensus development process within a framework that organized the measures into categories and provided a structure to define the scope of the full set of measures including future additions.
In 2005, with funding from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (RWJF) and working with the guidance of an advisory panel, which included measure developers, the Joint Commission took the lead role in the development of uniform, standardized technical specifications for the measure set. This resulted in the creation of the Implementation Guide for the National Quality Forum (NQF) Endorsed Nursing-Sensitive Care Performance Measures. After development, the guide was made publicly available on the Joint Commission’s web site.
In January 2007, the RWJF funded a project to test the NQF endorsed nursing-sensitive care measure set for reliability, feasibility, and impact on quality of care in a group of volunteer test hospitals. A call for participation, followed by the random selection of a diverse group of test sites, was conducted in spring 2007. Final analysis of the test results and recommendations were completed in December, 2008. A
project summary describing the 24 month project activities is available.