The National Quality Forum, a Washington-based healthcare quality standards-setting organization, has endorsed 12 patient safety-related measures covering topics such as patient falls, nurse staffing levels and healthcare-associated infections.

This is the third group of measures endorsed this year by the NQF's patient-safety endorsement project. In June, the group's Patient Safety-Complications Steering Committee approved 14 measures, addressing a range of issues, including medication safety in elderly patients, wrong-site surgery and postoperative embolism. In August, the committee green lighted two additional measures for venous thromboembolism and medication documentation.

“Protecting patients from harm is at the heart of NQF's work to improve healthcare quality,” said Dr. Helen Burstin, NQF's senior vice president for performance measures, in a news release announcing the latest measures. “These endorsed measures will have a significant impact on national patient safety efforts by helping providers measure, report on and ultimately improve the care they deliver.”The newly endorsed measures were developed by the National Committee for Quality Assurance, the CMS, the American Nurses Association and other groups.