Abstract
Health care in the United States is evolving. With this change, consumers and families are taking on greater responsibilities in managing their health care – sometimes voluntarily and sometimes involuntarily. For them to navigate effectively in this new environment they and their clinicians need information about the quality of care they receive, and that information has to be meaningful to their decision-making process. This is particularly so for people who are frail, functionally impaired, and have complex chronic conditions. The homebound are a subset of this group. Consumer and patient groups, including AARP, support the development of measures in critical gap areas, such as for patients who are homebound, who would benefit tremendously from the development of home-based quality of care measures. In addition to clinical measures, consumers would welcome development of measures in domains that capture patient and caregiver experience, care coordination, safety, and quality of life.