Quality Care Starts with Quality Data

Jennifer Dennard, E-Media Marketing Specialist
July 6, 2010

Measuring quality is often the first step to improving patient care. Providers have certainly become more attuned to the benefits of reporting performance-based data since the Joint Commission (an independent, not-for-profit organization that evaluates and accredits healthcare organizations and programs in the United States) launched its ORYX performance measurement and improvement initiative in 1997. That program was the first of its kind to measure hospital quality, and helped pave the way for more recent programs enacted by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS).

More recent health care reform legislation in the form of additional Medicare incentives and penalties has also added more fuel to the fire when it comes to quality data reporting on the part of physicians.

Paying Attention to the Numbers
Luckily, making quality data more comprehensive as more physicians and hospitals participate in reporting initiatives ultimately leads to improved patient care. A recent article in the New England Journal of Medicine, "Accountability Measures - Using Measurement to Promote Quality Improvement," emphasizes this fact:

"Far from the past attitude of resistance to all measurement, hospitals and physicians have embraced the measurement, and even the reporting of robust and authentic quality metrics as an important mechanism to drive the improvement of clinical processes," write the authors. "In doing so, they have achieved substantial gains that have undoubtedly saved thousands of lives."

This growing enthusiasm for reporting has indeed helped providers improve clinical processes, and provided patients with an ever-increasing number of consumer-friendly resources that help them make more informed healthcare decisions. Resources such as HealthGrades.com and Consumer Reports Health have armed healthcare consumers with information they can, ideally, discuss with their doctor before seeking treatment for a particular ailment.

"Hospital quality data makes it possible to review hospital performance on specific measures and identify opportunities for quality improvement," Jessica Clifton, product manager and marketing coordinator at Billian's HealthDATA. "Knowing where you stand as a provider can help you identify improvement areas in your facility, see how you compare to your peers, and gives you some measure on which to gauge your performance improvement over time."

Evergreen Sees Success with EverCARE
Evergreen Hospital Medical Center, located in Kirkland, WA, places great importance on quality data - so much so that it decided to take quality data from organizations such as the CMS and integrate them into a hospital-wide initiative to improve patient care. The EverCARE program centers on keeping patients and families informed, timely responsiveness and increased teamwork, according to Mary Jim Montgomery, Senior Vice President of Patient Care Services at Evergreen.

"We embarked on this initiative about three years ago," says Montgomery. "[I]t was driven by our patient satisfaction scores that are publicly reported, and our desire to be a patient family-centered facility," says Montgomery. "Our goal was to show value and transparency in our quality."


She explains that the EverCARE program helps disseminate CMS quality data "from the ground up and the top down." Quality data is given to EverCARE Champions - the hospital's nearly 100 grassroots cheerleaders and implementers in every unit and area at Evergreen, who then broadcast that information to hospital personnel.

"[E]ach month we give them a packet of information about how we're doing that they then take back to their respective departments and put on bulletin boards and broadcast to the staff," Montgomery explains. "So we're trying to integrate it at the lowest level. At the same time, it comes from the top down with our Monday memos and our management email memos sent to all employees from the CEO. So we have an approach from the ground up and the top down."

The EverCARE program is definitely making a difference. The hospital recently achieved a 96-percentile rating with regard to patients likely to recommend the hospital, and a score of 89-percentile rating with regard to overall patient satisfaction year to date as, provided by the hospital's vendor HealthStream, which conducts surveys in over 400 hospitals.

"It’s taken three years to really see some payoff," says Montgomery. "It’s a journey, it’s not an instant fix."


Supplying The Right Solution
Vendors also use these data sets to streamline their sales efforts, establishing more qualified provider prospects based on performance areas that hospitals may be struggling with such as readmissions, infection control, patient safety, medication errors, risk management, quality management and patient feedback/complaint management, to name a few. Clinical information systems vendor Meta Inc. explains just such a scenario in its case study, " SOMC Reduces Medication Errors and Further Enhances Patient Care with Unique POC Medication and Documentation System."

Tools such as the Billian's HealthDATA Portal database that offer hospital quality data will make it easier for providers and vendors alike to access this information in a meaningful way.

Quality Data will Drive Reform
Step by step, program by program, providers are in the process of creating a valuable pool of quality measurement data that will reform healthcare even further. Vendors will target providers with the best products for their patients' needs, care will improve across the healthcare continuum, and perhaps initiatives like EverCARE will become standard.