Virtually Hosting a National Medical Society Conference. Lessons Learned from the 2020 Association of Pulmonary and Critical Care Medicine Program Directors Conference.

The coronavirus pandemic forced the Association of Pulmonary and Critical Care Medicine Program Directors to change the 2020 annual conference to a virtual format with relatively short notice. Using the experience of the planning committee and survey feedback from attendees, we describe the steps taken to implement a virtual conference and lessons learned in the process. The lessons described include frequent and concise communication, establishment of roles within a discrete production team, preparing speakers with a protocolized training session, active moderation of the chat box, using interactive polling and online documents to improve interactivity, a shorter agenda with more frequent breaks, encouraging "virtual happy hours" to connect with colleagues, and establishing facilitators for breakout rooms.

Quality improvement and pay for performance: barriers to and strategies for success.

Linking health-care quality improvement to payment appears straightforward. Improve the care that one provides to one's patients, and one is rewarded financially. Should one fail to improve care, then one is financially penalized. However, this strategy assumes that health-care workers and administrators possess the necessary tools and knowledge to improve care and that the metrics being measured have been rigorously tested. Although health-care workers and hospitals are publically committed to reducing inappropriate care, improving patient safety, achieving better health outcomes, and holding down costs, many are unsure how to do this effectively. We present the case that it is not usually the people who create the problems in our health system; rather, it is the processes of the care-delivery system that require change. Incentivizing performance improvement using simple metrics is unlikely to work before using compensation strategies to incentivize behavior change in clinical systems. But prior to even doing this, leaders and physicians must first create accurate performance measures and understand improvement science.

Will performance measurement lead to better patient outcomes? What are the roles of the National Quality Forum and Medical Specialty Societies?

Performance measures (PMs) are specified metrics by which a health-care provider's care can be compared with national benchmarks. The use of PMs is a key component of efforts to improve the quality and value of health care. The National Quality Forum (NQF) is the federally recognized endorser of PMs. From 2006 to 2009, the Quality Improvement Committee (QIC) of the American College of Chest Physicians engaged in the review of proposed PMs as a member of the NQF. This article provides a review of the QIC's experience with PMs and NQF membership and the lessons learned, an overview of the enhancements made to the NQF endorsement process in 2010 and 2011, and a discussion of the next steps that would further strengthen the measure development and endorsement processes and increase the likelihood of measurement leading to better patient outcomes.