Published by Nephrology News & Issues
March 25, 2014

Kidney Care Partners said it has formed a new organization of community leaders that will develop facility-level quality performance measures for dialysis providers, called Kidney Care Quality Alliance (KCQA).

Kidney Care Partners, which will be funding the alliance, is a coalition of patient advocates, dialysis professionals, care providers, researchers and manufacturers. KCP released its Strategic Blueprint for Advancing Kidney Care Quality earlier this month.

KCQA will develop approximately two new quality measures this year, according to the release.

KCP launched a similar effort in 2005 that led to the development of quality measures eventually endorsed by the National Quality Forum. In 2011-12, two of these measures were consolidated and re-endorsed as a single NQF-endorsed vascular access measure along with an influenza immunization measure.

Co-chairing the new KCQA initiative are Dr. Edward Jones, a practicing nephrologist who serves as chair of KCP, and Dr. Allen Nissenson, chief medical officer of DaVita HealthCare Partners and emeritus professor of Medicine at the David Geffen School of Medicine at the University of California at Los Angeles. The group will have a 10-member steering committee that will include the following:

• Edward Jones, MD, co-chair—Renal Physicians Association

• Allen Nissenson, MD , co-chair—DaVita

• Akhtar Ashfaq, MD—Amgen

• Donna Bednarski, RN, MSN—American Nephrology Nurses Association

• Barbara Fivush, MD—American Society of Pediatric Nephrology

• Raymond Hakim, MD, PhD—American Society of Nephrology

• Eduardo Lacson, Jr., MD, MPH—Fresenius Medical Care North America

• Chris Lovell, RN, MSN—Dialysis Clinics Inc.

• Thomas Manley, RN, BSN—National Kidney Foundation

• Gail Wick, MHSA, BSN, RN—American Kidney Fund

“KCP’s Blueprint was a multi-stakeholder, consensus document that provided a strategic roadmap to improve quality,” said Dr. Jones. “Our next step toward significantly improving kidney care quality will be a collaborative initiative to develop facility-level performance measures.”

See the original article here.