Premeeting Ratings (Round 1)We inst

Premeeting Ratings (Round 1)We instructed the panel to rate each measure on the following three criteria on a 9-point Likert scale: importance (primary criterion), reach, and performance gap. We defined a process measure to be “important” if (1) strong scientific evidence exists demonstrating that compliance with a given process of care improves health care outcomes, (2) the process being measured is closely connected to the outcome it affects, and (3) the magnitude of effect of performing the measure is large enough that it is worth doing. We defined an outcome to be important if (1) it is important to patients or clinicians, (2) it is meaningful across multiple populations, and (3) it can help facilitate change and quality improvement. The importance scale ranged from 1 (“not important at all”) to 9 (“extremely important”), where 1-3 indicated “definitely not important,” 4-6 indicated “uncertain or equivocal importance,” and 7-9 indicated “definitely important.” The “reach” of a measure was defined as the number of patients it applies to, where 1 indicated “smallest reach: applicable to few or no patients” and 9 indicated “largest reach: applicable to almost all patients.” “Performance gap” was defined as the gap between current and desired performance on each process measure or gap between current and desired level for each outcome from 1 (no gap) to 9 (largest gap).