PQA Pharmacy Quality Measures in Development

Pharmacy quality measures evaluate quality of pharmacies and assess pharmacist-provided care and pharmacy-based services. Pharmacy quality measures provide pharmacists the opportunity to demonstrate their contributions toward high-quality, patient-centered care.

PQA is developing a set of standard pharmacy quality measures that would be appropriate for pharmacy accountability, once assessed against standard measure criteria and endorsed by PQA membership.

Overview of Current Measure Development Work

PQA's Pharmacy Measure Development Action Plan guides the organization's continued work to build out a pharmacy measure set suitable for payer-pharmacy arrangements. It details progress and next steps for developing measure concepts that were prioritized based on their feasibility and usability. PQA’s work to develop a pharmacy measure set currently includes 20 measures or concepts:

  • Five (5) PQA-Endorsed Pharmacy Measures;

  • Ten (10) PQA Pharmacy Measure Concepts in Development; and

  • Five (5) PQA Pharmacy Measure Concepts Prioritized for Future Development. 

This is a multi-year initiative that requires extensive testing to evaluate and refine measure concepts, using novel data sources to assess pharmacy services for which measures have not previously existed. Distinct from health plan measures, which generally use standardized and easily available claims data, pharmacy measures depend on more complex and variable data that is captured, organized and transmitted in different ways. The speed and scale at which PQA can test, evaluate and endorse pharmacy measure concepts depends on the broad participation and support of health plans, pharmacies and other stakeholders in the medication use process.

Resources and Updates

Questions about PQA’s pharmacy measure development should be directed to PQA’s Performance Measurement Team at [email protected].

Learn More about the PQA Measure Development Process