RFP for Clinical Quality Measures to Improve Diagnosis

The Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation has issued an RFP for Clinical Quality Measures to Improve Diagnosis

In November 2018, the Moore Foundation announced its Diagnostic Excellence Initiative, which aims to reduce harm from erroneous or delayed diagnoses, reduce costs and redundancy in the diagnostic process, improve health outcomes, and save lives. According to the foundation, twelve million Americans experience a diagnostic error each year, with diagnostic errors playing a role in an estimated 40,000 to 80,000 deaths annually in the United States.

In other words, there is an urgent need to improve diagnosis; however, without an awareness of baseline performance and standards against which to compare performance, there is no way to measure improvement or to gauge the results of interventions. Despite a lengthy and growing list of clinical quality measures in health care, few existing measures address diagnostic performance specifically. The challenge of finding meaningful clinical measures for diagnosis reflects the complexity of the diagnostic process.

To help address the problem, grants of up to $500,000 over eighteen months will be awarded to support the development of innovative clinical quality measures that promote excellence in diagnosis of three categories of disease that comprise the most common and most harmful diagnostic errors, acute vascular events (such as stroke and myocardial infarction), infections (such as sepsis and pneumonia), and cancer (such as lung and colorectal cancer). The expected work requires two interlinked activities: 1) development of the rationale for a measure; and 2) operationalizing the measure into an algorithm.

Proposals should include teams and partnerships that include a multidisciplinary group of experts, including clinicians with content expertise, individuals with appropriate analytic expertise (data science, statistics, measure development), and persons with experience using relevant data sources.

To be eligible, applicants should have an affiliation with an institution or sponsoring organization, including academic institutions, healthcare delivery systems, medical and clinical specialty societies, patients and patient advocacy groups, medical liability and risk-management organizations, independent research organizations, electronic health record vendors, and others with interest and/or expertise relevant to diagnosis measure development. Applicants must be familiar with the U.S. healthcare system and have grant outputs feasible for implementation in the U.S.

See the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation website for complete program guidelines and application instructions.