Coming together to achieve quality cardiovascular care.

Agreement on the processes of health care that are necessary to achieve healthcare quality goals is the foundation of performance measurement. In addition, standardization of performance measures themselves is essential to avoid confusion and undue burden among those whose performance is being measured. Recent work on cardiovascular performance measures establishes a new standard for how those agreements can be achieved and maintained among multiple stakeholders. The collaboration among the American College of Cardiology (ACC), the American Heart Association (AHA), the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), the Joint Commission on Accreditation of Healthcare Organizations (JCAHO), and the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) serves as a useful model for how to reduce the burden of measure development, endorsement for public reporting, and implementation for quality improvement and accountability.