During 2007–2009, staff at the National Quality Forum convened a steering committee to create a measurement framework for evaluating the efficiency of medical care given to a patient during an episode of care. An episode of care as defined by the National Quality Forum is:
a series of temporally contiguous healthcare services related to the treatment of a given spell of illness or provided in response to a specific request by the patient or other relevant entity. (Other relevant entity refers to anyone involved in a patient's care, such as a caregiver, physician or hospital.)