Clinical Quality Measures: A Challenge for-and to-Family Physicians.

Introduction: Improving design, selection and implementation of appropriate clinical quality measures can reduce harms and costs of health care and improve the quality and experience of care delivery. These measures have not been evaluated for appropriateness for use in performance measurement in a systematic, reproducible, and widely accepted manner.

Methods: We defined 10 criteria for evaluation of measure appropriateness in 4 domains: Patient-centeredness of outcomes, specification of population measured and measure detail, reliable evidence that benefits likely outweigh harms, and independence from significant confounders.