HQW 2024: Why Quality, Why NAHQ, Why Now-video - Why Quality, Why NAHQ, Why Now?

Video Transcription

Video Summary

Stephanie Mercado, CEO of the National Association for Healthcare Quality (NAHQ/NACU), argues that healthcare quality professionals won’t be fully respected until “quality” itself is consistently understood, valued, and prioritized. Too often, quality is treated as a compliance function or a “fix-it” department rather than a leadership driver of safety, equity, population health, and value-based care. She calls on the field to “get in the arena” (invoking Teddy Roosevelt’s “Man in the Arena”) and elevate “capital Q” Quality across healthcare.<br /><br />Mercado reviews quality’s evolution: early standards from Ernest Codman and the American College of Surgeons, Medicare’s role in catalyzing utilization review, the rise of evidence-based practice, landmark IOM reports (To Err Is Human; Crossing the Quality Chasm), and the ACA’s outcomes focus. This history created a fragmented workforce—multiple generations trained inconsistently—without a unified plan.<br /><br />She positions NACU as the profession’s backbone: founded in 1976, creator of the CPHQ certification, and developer of the 2015 Healthcare Quality Competency Framework to define the “how” of quality work. Through initiatives like Workforce Accelerator and frontline safety training, early adopters (e.g., Kaiser Permanente Northern California, Lifespan) showed measurable gains in safety and costs.<br /><br />She concludes urgency is driven by “care, cost, and cliff” (patient harm, unsustainable spending, and a shrinking workforce) and urges membership, CPHQ certification, and organizational adoption of NACU programs.

Keywords

healthcare quality management

Stephanie Mercado

National Association for Healthcare Quality (NAHQ/NACU)

CPHQ certification

Healthcare Quality Competency Framework

patient safety and equity

value-based care