Measuring hospital quality effectively is a challenging task. This article provides an approach that considers three critical dimensions of quality measurement, and provides an approach to developing a composite score.
Measuring Hospital Quality: Composite Quality Measures
To truly "move the needle" on quality, a hospital or health system must begin by clearly defining and it. While there is no standard healthcare industry definition of what constitutes "quality" in acute care services, we have found that top healthcare performers adopt a composite of measures that consider three dimensions:
Evidence based physician order sets and clinical care plans provide a rich assortment of additional quality process measures.
Top performing organizations not only define and measure healthcare quality, they ask the question: "How are we doing?"
We believe that the best way to answer that question is to compare your organization's results to those of "Top Performers." There are a number of organizations that provide excellent health care industry clinical quality and financial benchmark information. Through benchmarking, organizations are able to identify their strengths and weaknesses, and develop strategies to address and overcome healthcare quality gaps.
Benchmarked performance ratings can then be considered individually, and rolled up to measure overall quality performance for individual categories (e.g. Outcomes vs. Resource Utilization,) conditions (e.g. pneumonia vs. AMI,) individual hospitals within a health delivery system, or a system - wide composite score.
Many Top Performers establish quality performance goals, and compensate their leaders on degree of goal achievement. As a culture of quality and patient safety evolves, patient and physician satisfaction increases, market share and revenues rise, and financial performance improves dramatically.
Healthcare Strategic Innovation for Accelerated Improvement
Hospitals and Health Systems typically engage in an annual process of developing or updating a Strategic Plan. This article suggests a new approach that is far from any "traditional" approach to strategic planning…Hospital Acquired Conditions and Your Health System’s Bottom Line
Beginning October 1, 2008 Medicare will no longer reimburse hospitals for care provided to resolve certain hospital acquired conditions. This will have significant financial impact on some hospitals. This article discusses this impact and presents ideas regarding what hospitals can do to protect themselves.Hospital Quality Management Effectiveness Self Assessment
If you are responsible for Hospital or Health System Quality, try this quality management self assessment to see how you stack up against industry top performers.