QuIRC’s First Year: In alignment with our blueprint and thanks to an investment by our board, PQA successfully stood up our Quality Innovation and Research Center, or “QuIRC.” QuIRC is a strategic initiative to accelerate progress in medication use quality and focus on clinical outcomes and provider contributions to care. Through pilots, demonstration and research projects and consensus-building events, QuIRC answers the difficult questions needed to develop new, complex measures and effectively implement them. 

PQA’s New Look: PQA unveiled our refreshed brand at the 2023 PQA Annual Meeting. This fresh and modernized logo and color scheme reflects our positive, forward-looking view of the vital role of medications in health care – and our role in bringing the industry together to improve quality. 

A Strategic Focus on Oncology: PQA continues to make strides towards improving the quality of care for individuals using oral anticancer medications (OAM). The first phase of this initiative produced consensus-based recommendations from 23 national experts and patients to prioritize opportunities for improving the quality of oral anticancer medication (OAM) use. In 2024, PQA will begin research to advance the health plan measure concept for adherence or persistence to OAMs, which was the top priority of our convened experts. 

Driving the Future for Medication Therapy Management (MTM) Quality Measurement: PQA is building consensus on the research, measurement and strategies needed to evolve our national approach to evaluating MTM service quality. Informed by a robust environmental scan and a November 2 national convening event, PQA has drafted a call to action that includes eight elements. You can comment on that through January 12.  

Supporting a Diverse Quality Workforce: We launched this year the PQA Diverse Quality Leaders Program to provide expanded opportunities for individuals at various career stages to become leaders in quality. PQA believes that diverse leaders and teams make decisions that are more responsive to the needs, perspectives and interests of diverse populations. Two dozen individuals participated in the program’s first year, which will continue in 2024. 

Relaunching the Medication Use Quality (MUQ) Continuing Education program: Providing training and education about medication use quality is a top priority for PQA. In 2023, we updated our CE program to provide more flexibility for busy professionals with courses that are 2-3 hours.  

New Meeting Destinations and Attendance Milestones: For the first time in our history, the PQA Annual Meeting took place outside of the Washington-Baltimore region. We had a fantastic event in Nashville, and we followed that up with our Leadership Summit, which had an all-time record-high attendance in Arlington, Va., this November. Gathering face-to-face with our members is always the highlight of our year, as it builds relationships and partnerships across the industry. 

Pioneering Quality Innovation: PQA launched two proof-of-concept pilots to implement four promising blood pressure and hemoglobin A1C pharmacy measure concepts in value-based payment arrangements (VBAs) between payers and pharmacies. We also completed an RFI process as we move to launch pilots to implement and test high priority immunization pharmacy measure concepts in 2024. This is all part of PQA’s national-leading work to develop a set of standard pharmacy performance measures that would be appropriate for assessing pharmacy performance and for use in VBAs. 

Advancing Health Equity: PQA is committed to making medication use quality and measurement more equitable. We launched a Health Equity Technical Expert Panel (TEP) to assess PQA’s health equity strategy, including stratification (including variables for both measure testing and implementation in quality programs) and risk adjustment of certain PQA measures. 

Ensuring Organizational Excellence: PQA is improving our structure and processes to ensure we always deliver maximum value to our members. Supported by our new Chief Operating Officer, Melissa Viscovich, we are modernizing our bylaws and upgrading our digital systems to strengthen how we work with you to improve medication use quality.