The Industry Standard for Healthcare Quality—Reimagined for What’s Next
February 25, 2026Share:
For years, quality professionals, healthcare leaders and organizations have been working tirelessly to improve quality. That success has often been clouded with variability in performance and challenges in sustainability. Ten years ago, NAHQ published its Healthcare Quality Competency Framework™. The Framework was the first in a series of tools developed by NAHQ with experts in the field to help organizations achieve systemic, repeatable improvement through defining, standardizing and implementing healthcare quality competencies.
As healthcare and healthcare quality continue to evolve, this month we launched an enhancement to the Healthcare Quality Competency Framework™.
The enhanced NAHQ Healthcare Quality Competency Framework™, expert-created, data-informed, and continuously updated and validated—serves as the industry standard and anchors all NAHQ offerings. The enhanced Framework retains its eight competency domains while updating competency statements and skills to reflect modern quality practice, including patient experience, population health, and care equity, ensuring organizations have the most up-to-date guidance needed to build a competent, coordinated workforce prepared to deliver healthcare excellence.
The Framework’s updated look provides a quick visual cue, helping you ensure you’re referencing the most up-to-date content.
It’s us, however, the leaders in healthcare who bring this Framework to life.
NAHQ is more than just the professional home for thousands of healthcare quality professionals; it is the leading source of standardized healthcare quality competencies, professional and workforce development tools for healthcare leaders and organizations. The ROI-Q™ Report, published last year, validated that investing in workforce development improves clinical and financial outcomes.
How are you investing in your workforce? How have you used the Framework in your organization?
Maybe it’s time to evaluate your organization’s workforce using the industry standard Healthcare Quality Competency Framework, invest in HQ Principles team training, submit an abstract to NAHQ next to share best practices with your peers, and finally commit to getting the CPHQ or obtaining one of our new micro-credentials.
April Taylor, FACHE, CMQ/OE, CLSSBB, CPPS, CPHQ
NAHQ President
There is a roadmap to healthcare Quality excellence. NAHQ can help you follow it.
The NAHQ Healthcare Quality Competency Framework™ serves as the industry-standard, defining the Quality Safety competencies, skills and behaviors required to advance Quality & Safety excellence across the healthcare continuum.
This expert-created, data-informed framework is continuously validated and updated by NAHQ to ensure it provides the most up-to-date information, guiding professionals, organizations, and the healthcare industry to create a competent, coordinated workforce prepared to deliver healthcare excellence.
