The AAMC submitted comments to the National Quality Forum (NQF) on May 17 in support of the Social Risk Trial Draft Report that was released on April 19.
The association applauded the efforts of the NQF’s second Social Risk Trial and agreed with the outlined recommendations to be undertaken across stakeholders as part of an iterative process, including the necessary examination of the conceptual and empirical relationships between social risk and health outcomes.
“Genuine progress to eliminate health and health care inequities will require partnership and planning to define and standardize social risk factors, streamline the collection of appropriate data, and report and improve measure performance,” the AAMC letter stated.
In particular, the AAMC agreed that permanently formalizing the submission, analysis, and evaluation of social risk factors for NQF measure endorsement activities is one key area to advance measurement science to support the adoption and inclusion of social risk in quality measurement. The association urged the NQF to review its endorsement process for instances where endorsement decisions may not have consistently evaluated the inclusion of social risk factors in risk adjustment models as compared with clinical risk factors.
The letter emphasized a strong belief “that accurate and unbiased quality measurement requires statistical adjustment of all factors affecting performance that are not quality of care.”
The AAMC noted that it looks forward to continuing this critical dialogue with the NQF and is heartened that a new Technical Expert Panel has convened and will build off of the Social Risk Trial’s work.