High Quality Content by WIKIPEDIA articles! Quality Improvement Organizations (QIOs) monitor the appropriateness, effectiveness, and quality of care provided to Medicare beneficiaries. They are private contractor extensions of the federal government that work under the auspices of the U.S. Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS). In recent years QIOs have undertaken to facilitate continual improvement of health care services within their constituent communities in addition to their original and ongoing statutory audit/inspection role of medical peer review, i.e., akin to the traditional function of quality assurance. This shift in emphasis began in the mid-1990s and has accelerated into the 21st century. Originally known as PROs (Peer Review Organizations), their name was officially changed to QIOs as per the Federal Register on May 24, 2002 in large part to reflect this new emphasis on population-based quality improvement.