CINCINNATI — Kroger Health, the health care division of The Kroger Co., has made a $100,000 donation to the Pharmacy Quality Alliance (PQA) to assist in the development of standard pharmacy performance measures.

“We are committed to empowering our health care professionals to work at the top of their licenses. As medication experts and some of the most accessible healthcare professionals, we know pharmacists improve health outcomes for our patient populations,” said Jim Kirby, chief commercial officer, Kroger Health. “Kroger Health is proud to support the development of pharmacy-level quality measures, which are necessary to facilitate fair and equitable payment for value-based pharmacist care services.”

PQA’s high‐impact measures demonstrate the importance of pharmacist‐provided care in improving chronic disease outcomes and critical areas of public health. Kroger Health is working with PQA to implement pharmacist-led, value-based chronic condition management programs to test diabetes and blood pressure measure concepts. PQA has developed six pharmacy measures that are ready for current implementation at pharmacies across the nation now, and ten additional measure concepts that are more complex have been identified for development.

Kroger Health’s support will assist in the facilitation of broad scale testing of developed concepts and expands information technology infrastructure, and disseminates findings to support scale, spread, and sustainability of innovative pharmacy services.

“We are grateful for Kroger Health’s generous contribution and support for this important initiative,” said Micah Cost, chief executive officer, PQA. “Kroger Health’s investment will enable us to further advance our efforts to develop and pilot high-impact pharmacy performance measures in value-based care and other quality programs, with a shared goal of improving patient health outcomes.”