The American Health Quality Association has thrown its support behind the creation of a comprehensive system to measure and report on the performance of health care organizations and practitioners. The Institute of Medicine, a health care trade group, recently proposed creating the new system, which would be a universal reporting bank for measuring the quality of health care and rewarding high-quality care. The AHQA, which is a lobbying agency, has proposed that quality-improvement organizations (QIO), which are consultants to hospitals, nursing homes and home-health agencies, should provide the measurement and reporting capabilities.

 …