Development and testing of performance measures for pharmacy services.

Objective: To report on the status of the pilot work of PQA, a pharmacy quality alliance, to develop and test performance metrics of pharmacy services for use in quality improvement, benchmarking, and pay-for-performance benchmarks.

Design: Observational cohort study.

Setting: Three health plans (commercial, Medicare and Medicaid) located in the northeastern United States and one nationwide prescription drug plan.