"How would health care measurement look different if it reflected what patients say they need and want?" In September 2016, AIR hosted a two-day, in-person meeting devoted to answering this question, exploring ways to drive progress toward patient-centered measurement—health care measurement driven by patients’ expressed preferences, needs, and values that informs progress toward better health, better care, and lower costs.

Funded by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation, and the California Health Care Foundation, the effort resulted in the Principles for Making Health Care Measurement Patient-Centered. These five principles of patient-centered measurement offer a vision of measurement that is patient-driven, holistic, transparent, comprehensible and timely, and co-created with patients. When translated into action, the patient-centered measurement principles transform measurement in ways that reflect what patients say they need and want.

We encourage you to think about the ways in which you and your organization can contribute to this shared goal of making health care measurement patient-centered. With combined efforts across all stakeholder groups—patients, patient advocates, researchers, measure developers, policymakers, health care providers and organizations, insurers, and others—we can drive progress toward better care, better health, and lower costs in ways that align with patients’ values.

With support from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, AIR launched small-scale pilots to demonstrate how to implement the patient-centered measurement principles in real-world settings.