All Entries Tagged With: "quality measures"
Contest entry: Hospital quality summit
Here’s another helpful hint about quality from one contest entry submission.
Director of Quality, Rosemary O’Gara, RN, CPHQ, CPHRM, of East Orange General Hospital developed a nursing quality summit, which is a monthly meeting in which managers address quality variances in the same way that budget variances are discussed and reviewed.
At the meeting, they review the following items:
- Falls
- Restraints
- Pressure ulcers
- Pain managements
- Medication reconciliation
Rosemary says, ”Quality outcomes have significantly improved since inception of the summit in September 2008.”
Keep those contest entries coming, and you could win the free registration to The Greeley Medical Staff Institute Symposium (Nov. 8-9, Naples, Fl)!
We’ll share the entries on the blog and select the best one at the end of the month.
To enter the drawing, submit your best practice, tool, or tip to us. Find more details here!
HHS creates the first ever quality measures clearinghouse
The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) last month announced the first quality measure inventory called “National Quality Measures Clearinghouse.” The public Web site, under the Agency of Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ), provides information on reporting, payment, and quality improvement. Its goal is to better measure quality in the public and private sector by creating a uniform set of measurements, as well as promote transparency for health care providers, clinicians, patients, and policy makers.
HHS plans to expand this inventory in the coming months, according to a Nov. 13 press release.
How to measure quality and collect data
Many experts believe that the purpose of a hospitalist program is not simply to reduce the length of stay of patients, but to improve quality of care. With agencies such as the Joint Commission (formerly known as JCAHO) recommending that hospitals report performance data, hospitals are looking for effective ways to collect data and measure quality, particularly as pay-for-performance initiatives become more prevalent.
One method of collecting data is measuring the operational performance of an individual hospitalist. Quality officers can evaluate performance based on the following tracked data in a report card:
- Patient discharge times
- Readmission percentage
- Pre-op totals
- Total billed
- Number of admissions
- Number of night float admissions
- Total number of discharges
The above excerpt is adapted from Tools and Strategies for an Effective Hospitalist Program by Jeffrey R. Dichter, MD, FACP and Kenneth G. Simone, DO, published by HCPro, Inc.
