CONQUEST 2.0: an emerging clinical performance measurement tool

Variations in quality of healthcare have existed for many years, yet interest in measuring, understanding, and eliminating these variations has waxed and waned. The advent of managed care and its perceived focus on reducing costs has stimulated interest in variations in quality of care. In response to the need to better understand and measure quality, the Agency for Health Care Policy and Research (AHCPR) funded the development of a tool capable of categorizing clinical performance measures, a subset of quality measures, for comparing and evaluating them relative to a user's specific needs for measuring and improving quality. This research lead to the development of the COmputerized Needs-oriented QUality measurement Evaluation SysTem (CONQUEST)--a free software quality improvement tool that includes about 1,200 clinical performance measures. CONQUEST enables users to quickly identify measures of interest, compare them on the basis of factors of importance, and select measures that will help them measure and improve care.