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Is your hospital ready for a CMS quality initiative?

Executive Briefings Digest, February 3, 2003

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What began as a voluntary initiative by the hospital industry to collect and share data on quality measures may eventually end in enforcement. After CMS developed the nursing home quality initiative, they began a similar program for home health care-and are moving toward a hospital quality initiative sometime by 2004, says Rob Sweezy, director of public relations for the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid (CMS).

As a first step, hospital associations—along with CMS and the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ)—want hospitals across the nation to begin voluntarily reporting quality information on the following 10 patient care quality measures:

Heart attack (Acute myocardial infarction)
1. Was aspirin given to the patient when admitted to the hospital?
2. Was aspirin prescribed when the patient was discharged?
3. Was a beta-blocker given to the patient when admitted to the hospital?
4. Was a beta-blocker prescribed when the patient was discharged?
5. Was an ACE Inhibitor given for the patient with heart failure?
Heart Failure
6. Did the patient receive an assessment of his or her heart function?
7. Was an ACE Inhibitor given to the patient?
Pneumonia
8. Was an antibiotic given to the patient in a timely fashion?
9. Had a patient received a Pneumococcal vaccination?
10. Was the patient's oxygen level assessed when admitted?

Source: Briefings on Patient Safety,
http://www.hcmarketplace.com/Prod.cfm?id=234&S=EEBD

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