Measurement of Consumer Engagement in HIV Care Quality Improvement

Engaging consumers in planning, delivering, assessing, and improving HIV care has long been a priority in the United States. The Ryan White CARE Act of 1990 (Care Act) was an early driver for establishing a culture of consumer engagement in HIV care quality improvement (QI). The Health Resources and Services Administration, which administers the Care Act, and its Center for Quality Improvement and Innovation (CQII) are interested in answering several questions about consumer engagement: How much engagement is being undertaken in HIV QI work, how good is engagement, what are the impacts of engagement, and how can engagement be improved? To help answer these questions, RAND Corporation researchers worked with HIV care providers and consumers to identify priorities and measures of consumer engagement in HIV care QI.

In this report, the researchers describe how they partnered with CQII to identify measurement priorities and existing measures for evaluating engagement in HIV care QI. A guiding premise of this collaborative effort was that different partners in the project have differing evaluation questions about engagement in HIV QI work. The goal was thus to develop a table of findings that identifies both the priorities of partners in HIV QI work and the available instruments and measures that address those priorities. The resulting prioritized table of findings may be considered a living document to be used by all parties to document, track, discuss, evaluate, and report on engagement using a shared list of priorities, instruments, and measures.