The national quality movement has gained tremendous momentum but now is the time to focus on priorities, AHA President and CEO Rich Umbdenstock yesterday told the American Medical Association's national advocacy conference in Washington, D.C. "We see the activity and we see the momentum, but we need to give it shape and guidance." Umbdenstock said the seeds for closer coordination have been planted by the National Priorities Partnership, a coalition convened last November by the National Quality Forum that has agreed to work on a core set of improvements in the areas of care coordination and overuse, patient safety, palliative and end-of-life care, patient and family engagement, and population health. "We have to focus private and public measurement and reporting efforts around those priorities," said Umbdenstock, an NQF board member. Unless the nation starts measuring quality in a "more coordinated and organized fashion, we will be moving individual parts but we won't be moving the whole effort forward … in a way that spurs learning, spurs improvements and spurs informed decision-making by both patients and clinicians," he said.