HEALTH CARE

Group Receives Grants to Develop HMO Quality Measure: The National Committee for Quality Assurance, a nonprofit organization that accredits health maintenance organizations, will get about $900,000 in private and government money to develop new measures of quality for HMOs and other types of managed-care health plans. Pfizer Inc. of New York and Merck & Co. of Whitehouse Station, N.J., will together contribute about $300,000 toward the project; the U.S. Health Care Financing Administration will put in $300,000, and the Kaiser Family Foundation will put in $300,000, the NCQA said. The effort is also being made as Congress and the Clinton Administration debate changes to the government health insurance programs for the elderly and poor that would move more people into managed-care plans.