The 2024 PQA Annual Meeting is less than six weeks away, and we are excited to welcome you all back to Baltimore! 

PQA is a non-profit organization with 250 diverse members across healthcare. Our members include community and specialty pharmacy organizations, pharmacists and other healthcare providers, pharmacies, health plans, pharmacy benefit managers, life sciences, technology vendors, government agencies, health information technology partners, researchers, accrediting organizations and academia.

Today is an exciting and important day for PQA. The PQA Board of Directors completed the sale of all of PQA’s shares in Pharmacy Quality Solutions (PQS) to Innovaccer, a San Francisco, CA based healthcare technology company with a platform unifying patient data across systems and care settings. A statement  from our Board Chair, Susan Cantrell, followed the Innovaccer’s announcement at the HIMSS Global Health Conference & Exhibition in Orlando. 

Have you made your plans to join us at the 2024 PQA Annual Meeting, May 14-16, in Baltimore? There are plenty of volunteer opportunities available to attendees who want to maximize their involvement at the meeting.

February 29 was Rare Disease Day, providing an opportunity to raise awareness of the impact of rare diseases. Ensuring the quality of medication use is critically important for rare disease patients, payers, clinicians, specialty pharmacies and everyone with a role in the care process.

Today is Rare Disease Day. It’s an opportunity to raise awareness of the impact of rare diseases.

PQA is working with its members and the broader medication therapy management (MTM) community to build consensus on the research, measurement and strategies needed to evolve our national approach to evaluating MTM service quality.

As a healthcare quality educator, PQA offers a wide range of learning and education opportunities. The goal of our education programs is to promote the use and impact of PQA measures and advance the quality of medication use through research, strategic partnerships, collaboration and a variety of learning venues.

Patients, caregivers, family members and advocates have a critical role to play in high-quality medication use. They provide unique and valuable insights about what is important and meaningful in medication use quality, which supports the development of appropriate and useful quality measures, as well as related education, research and tools that support informed health care decisions and better medication use outcomes.

PQA mourns the passing of CMS Chief Medical Officer Jeffrey Kelman, MD, MMSc. Kelman served on the PQA Board of Directors for 10 years and most recently served on the board as a CMS Special Advisor. Kelman was a trusted advisor to PQA since its establishment in 2006. He was kind, generous and thoughtful in his support of PQA and its mission.

Kelman joined CMS in 2005 and helped implement the Part D program. He was a passionate advocate for patient-centered care and efforts to improve the quality of medication use. On behalf of our board, members and staff, PQA sends condolences to his family, friends, colleagues and the countless lives he touched during his life and career.

See Dr. Kelman's obituary for more on his life, accomplishments and family.

PQA and the Patient Advocate Foundation convened a diverse group of patients and pharmacy stakeholders in 2022 to identify and prioritize patient-centered outcomes research (PCOR) topics and evidence needed to improve social determinants of health (SDOH) screening and interventions in the pharmacy setting.

Join us as we head back to Baltimore for the 2024 PQA Annual Meeting, May 14-16! Registration is open, so make your plans now to join us and other quality professionals at the premier event for medication use quality.

Insulin persistence is associated with positive health and economic outcomes, according to a study conducted by researchers at the University of Mississippi, the Pharmacy Quality Alliance (PQA), and Ohio Northern University, the results of which were published in Clinical Diabetes in December of 2023. The study highlights the promising applicability of a method to measure insulin persistence at the population level. This same method is the foundation for PQA’s Persistence to Basal Insulin (PST-INS) health plan performance measure.

There is tremendous momentum and a keen focus among PQA member organizations on addressing social determinants and social drivers of health (SDOH). SDOH impacts every aspect of care, including medication use, and the impact of unmet health-related social needs on patient access and use of care, outcomes, total cost of care, well-being and satisfaction is apparent and a priority to payers and providers.

PQA has released a third edition of the PQA Social Determinants of Health (SDOH) Resource Guide, which profiles 40 SDOH services, including eight new services and updates to 10 initiatives from the previous two editions.

PQA’s talented staff is dedicated to improving medication safety, adherence and appropriate use. As experts in measure development, research, education and convening, they lead the implementation of PQA’s quality initiatives to support better medication use and high-quality care. This blog is one in a series profiling PQA's staff.

Save the date for the 2024 PQA Annual Meeting, May 14-16, in Baltimore, Md.

PQA has published more than 80 blogs this year, providing insights and updates on our work to improve medication use quality. As we close out 2023, here’s a look back at the top five blogs of the year.