Framework for performance measurement of health care networks and health plans

Emerging health networks are poised to play an important role in the future American health care delivery system. The trend toward vertical integration, coupled with growing purchaser and consumer demands for information about value, has created an increasingly chaotic measurement environment. This article describes a successful collaborative effort among providers, users, and purchasers of health services and developers of performance measurement tools and databases to develop principles and a framework for measuring the performance of health care networks. Eleven principles and five measurement categories were identified; seven clinical conditions were targeted for performance measurement.