There will need to be ongoing attention to developing quality measures that address quality of life, says Michael Wasserman, MD, CMD, and a geriatrician in California.

For instance, “If someone has end-stage Alzheimer’s disease and is in terrible pain and discomfort, is death a bad outcome? A good outcome is one that respects the dignity and wishes of our patients,” he says.

“This is the real determinant of whether we are delivering person-centered care. This is where quality measurement needs to go.”

Facilities and their care teams take quality and quality measurement seriously, says Rajeev Kumar, MD, CMD, chief medical officer at Symbria.

“Health care quality is always about best practices that define a path to optimal outcomes. It is the guardrail that keeps us on track to success,” Kumar says.

However, he admits that the pandemic “has exposed gaps in our systems and processes as we seek to define quality in post-acute and long term care. Any quality measures that we use or create to track our success with a pandemic must include and account for external factors that impact our performance and, sometimes, are beyond our control.”​