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In September 2004, the American Academy of Family Physicians (AAFP), the American College of Physicians (ACP), America’s Health Insurance Plans (AHIP), and the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ), joined together to lead an effort for determining, under the most expedient timeframe, how to most effectively and efficiently improve performance measurement, data aggregation, and reporting in the ambulatory care setting.

Originally known as the Ambulatory Care Quality Alliance, the coalition is now known as the AQA alliance because its mission has broadened to incorporate all areas of physician and other clinicians practice.

The AQA is a large voluntary multi-stakeholder collaborative of physicians and other clinicians, consumers, purchasers, health plans, and others who strive to meet its responsibilities in an effective, efficient, public and transparent manner. The mission of the AQA is to:

improve patient safety, health care quality and value in all settings through a collaborative process in which key stakeholders agree on and promote strategies to:

implement performance measurement at the physician and other clinician or group level;

collect and aggregate data in the most appropriate way; and

report meaningful information to consumers, physicians and other clinicians, and other stakeholders to inform decision-making and improve outcomes.

The goals of the AQA in 2009 are to:

Achieve full and active engagement of all AQA constituencies and serve as a catalyst for change as an open forum to exchange ideas and experiences across the broad community of stakeholders.
Focus all efforts on quality improvement, affordability, efficiency, and accountability, and actively promote the role of measurement to drive those goals.
Position the AQA as an active and critical resource to its members, other organizations within the quality enterprise, and policy-makers by providing continuous feedback to developers and endorsers on the implementation experience.

AQA’s mission and goals focus on key areas that can help identify quality gaps, control skyrocketing cost trends, reduce confusion over redundant measures and alleviate administrative burdens in the marketplace.

To work towards these goals the AQA has established several Workgroups

AQA Steering Group
Data Sharing and Aggregation
Performance Measurement
Reporting

The four founding organizations have been strongly encouraged by the support and participation by a broad range of stakeholder groups in moving toward this goal. AQA’s leadership has recently been expanded to include new steering group members and supporting organizations, which have expressed interest and been actively involved in AQA activities.