New "Core Quality Measures": Only a Beginning.

A plethora of quality measures are used in health care for quality improvement, accountability (including reimbursement), and research. The Core Quality Measures Collaborative, with input from the American Association of Family Physicians, recently released several groups of reduced core measure sets, including one for primary care. The proposed measures are less helpful for the increasing proportion patients with multiple morbidities or advancing illness. Going forward, the development of quality measures that assess multidimensional patient experiences and how closely the health care patients receive matches their goals in the face of multiple morbidities and advancing illness should be the focus.