National Quality Forum

Pioneering Improvements in Healthcare Quality

Homewatch CareGivers is a member of the National Quality Forum (NQF), a non-profit, nonpartisan organization dedicated to improving healthcare quality. The NQF acts, under legislative authority, as an advisory committee for federal government and private sector entities.

Homewatch CareGivers, LLC, is a voting member of the NQF, and this membership allows us to identify opportunities for the home care industry to educate and contribute to national efforts to improve health care. Homewatch CareGivers is the first home care company of its kind to become a member of the NQF, providing a voice for our industry.

At Homewatch CareGivers, LLC, we believe that home care plays an important role in reducing medical costs and hospital readmissions. We are dedicated to improving healthcare quality through sharing and collaboration, as well as identifying measures that demonstrate the value of quality home care, which occurs when we engage with other NQF members on select committees.

National Quality Partners

National Quality Partners (NQP™), an NQF initiative, is an active forum for National Quality Forum members to connect, collaborate, and provide thought leadership on quality improvement strategies to achieve national health and healthcare quality goals. NQP leads practical, action-oriented initiatives to drive meaningful and lasting change for patients and their families.

NQP™ addresses some of the nation’s highest-priority—and most complex—healthcare issues by engaging stakeholders from across the continuum of care.

Guided by the NQP Leadership Consortium, of which Homewatch CareGivers has been selected as a member, NQP sets priorities for action and provides strategic direction for healthcare improvement, such as Antibiotic and Opioid Stewardship, Shared Decision Making, and Social Determinants of Health.

NQF—working together with the NQP Action Teams, patient partners, clinicians, consumers, health plans, and other stakeholders—develops and delivers timely, practical resources for real-world needs. These tools help those on the frontlines improve the quality of care throughout their organizations.

The NQP Leadership Consortium comprises 30 experts and thought leaders from the NQF membership, including Blue Cross Blue Shield Association, Merck, American Hospital Association, and the Veterans Health Administration. The goal is to leverage all that expertise to “address critical healthcare challenges and priorities” such as “the integration of social determinants of health data to improve health outcomes.”

Shared Decision Making Action Team

Jennifer Ramona, our VP of Strategy & Healthcare Innovation, engages with other members of NQF as a member of a select group: the Shared Decision Making Action Team. Shared decision making is a process of communication in which clinicians and patients work together to make informed healthcare decisions that align with what matters most to patients and their individual concerns, preferences, goals, and values. We are also on the steering committee of the Shared Decision Making Member Connect as well as the Leadership Consortium, which determines the highest priorities of healthcare challenges to have Action Teams tackle.

NQF developed the National Quality Partners Playbook™: Shared Decision Making in Healthcare, which offers healthcare providers an “owner’s manual” to strengthen shared decision making. The practical guidance in the NQP Playbook includes the use of high-quality, evidence-based patient education resources called decision aids. Twenty public- and private-sector experts and national stakeholders—including Homewatch CareGivers—served on the Action Team as technical consultants. These included patient partners, clinicians, healthcare organizations, specialty societies, and federal agencies. The NQP Playbook is available for paid download on NQF’s website.

Contact us to learn more about our involvement in the National Quality Forum.