Effective March 27, 2023, the National Quality Forum (NQF) is no longer the consensus-based entity (CBE) funded through the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) National Consensus Development and Strategic Planning for Health Care Quality Measurement Contract. Battelle has been selected to oversee the endorsement & maintenance (E&M) of clinical quality and cost/resource use measures. Since the Spring 2023 cycle launched at NQF, measures submitted to this E&M cycle continued along the prior E&M protocols that were in place at time of the Spring 2023 “Intent to Submit.” Battelle took over the E&M work for the Spring 2023 cycle when developers and/or stewards submitted their full measure information, which for CBE #3742, the most recent measure specifications can be found here: https://p4qm.org/sites/default/files/2023-06/3742_-_patient_life_goals_survey.zip
To close out this E&M cycle, Battelle published the Spring 2023 measures for pre-evaluation public commenting, convened the E&M standing committees for their measure evaluation meetings, launched the Spring 2023 post-comment period, convened the E&M committees for the post-comment meeting, convened the CSAC to render a final endorsement decision, and executed the appeals period.
The PaLS is used to generate a patient-level t-score that reflects patient-reported satisfaction with how well his/her/their facility is doing in discussing life goals with the patient as part of the treatment planning process.
Measure Specs
General Information
Numerator
The numerator is the number of eligible patients from the denominator that completed at least one scorable item of the PaLS (i.e., at least one of the six Likert-type items).
Denominator
All prevalent adult chronic dialysis patients (≥18 y/o) treated by the facility (both In-Center and Home Dialysis) for greater than 90 days during the reporting period, who read and understand English.
Exclusions
Exclusions are implicit based on eligibility criteria to complete the survey. These include age less than 18; patient has a kidney transplant; patient with recovered renal function, or lost to follow up; and unable to read and/or understand English (whether self-assessed or self- reported). In our testing we also excluded duplicate patient surveys.
Public Comments