Dycs Quality Assurance

Quality measures are tools that help us measure or quantify healthcare processes, outcomes, patient outreach, and organizational structure and/or systems that are associated with the ability to provide high-quality health care and that relate to one or more quality goals for health care. These goals include: effective, safe, efficient, patient-centered, equitable, and timely care.

* for completion if part, or all, of the evidence has been sampled by the Internal and/or External Moderator

Medical professional should select quality measures for reporting such as commonly treated conditions, the types of care that are frequently delivered, the settings in which care is given, quality improvement goals and other quality reporting options that are available or being considered. A couple of options available are Physician Quality Reporting System and Value Based Purchasing. Both

The surveys are meant to be specific and consistent and are not just used to evaluate the organizations for improvement but are also to educate in the best practice standards adopted throughout health care and to help staff in ways to continually improve an organizations performance. For this purpose, in 1996 the Quality Check website was launched to help the Joint Commission provide information regarding the performance of accredited organizations to consumers and organizations. Users are able to search for accredited or certified organizations; they can locate organizations by either type of service or geographical area and lists of certified organizations as well as a hospital’s performance measures can be obtained.

Four performance measuring components under MIPS will collectively make up the overall MIPS Composite Performance Score (CPS) to evaluate the performance in terms of quality and value of care by the eligible clinicians to earn adjusted Medicare payments. Each component of the MIPS carry weight to the overall composite performance score. Measuring criteria followed by MIPS underlies on evidence based clinical quality measures and specialty-specific standards which are reviewed as well supported by clinical leaders and endorsed under consensus process driving towards positive

Just after the release of the IOM report in 1999, President Bill Clinton directed the Quality Interagency Coordination Task Force (QuIC) to develop and implement a plan of action for medical error incidence reduction and suggested that an error-reporting system should be established in all 50 states (Schulman & Kim, 2000). Schulman and Kim (2000) also stated that within 1 year, the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) will develop standards to prevent errors caused by similar-sounding brand names and packaging with new drug labeling standards by the end of the year. The Medical Errors Reduction Act of 2000, the Stop All Frequent Errors in Medicare and Medicaid Act of 2000, Medication Error Prevention Act of 2000, the Patient Safety and Errors Reduction Act, and the Voluntary Error Reduction and Improvement in Patient Safety Act were created to enforce error-reporting, the Center for Patient Safety within the AHRQ was established following the IOM report recommendations, and the Federal Center

Encourage the use of computer-generated or electronic medication administration records. Plan for the implementation of computerized prescriber order entry systems. Consider the use of machine-readable code (i.e., bar coding) in the medication administration process. Use computerized drug profiling in the pharmacy. Be a demanding customer of pharmacy system software; encourage vendors to incorporate and assist in implementing an adequate standardized set of checks into computerized hospital pharmacy systems (e.g., screening for duplicate drug therapies, patient allergies, potential drug interactions, drug/lab interactions, dose ranges, etc.)”. (Association,

The Joint Commission on Accreditation of Healthcare Organizations (JCAHO) core measures are geared at measurement of quality of care in specific areas. Development of the measures involves a rigorous process of incorporating information from stakeholders such as clinicians and medical societies, and

The National Quality Measures Clearinghouse (NQMC) is an initiative of the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality under the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (U.S. Department of Health & Human Services, 2015). NQMC is a website and database for information on evidence-based health care quality measures and measure sets (U.S. Department of Health & Human Services, 2015). “The NQMC mission is to provide practitioners, health care providers, health plans, integrated delivery systems, purchasers and others an accessible mechanism for obtaining detailed information on quality measures, and to further their dissemination, implementation, and use in order to inform health care decisions” (U.S. Department of Health & Human Services, 2015). There are several measures established in the NQMC that deal with prescribing the correct medications for hospitalized patients.

The program is an online database about patients’ controlled prescription drug history. This information helps doctors detect, and potentially prevent, abuse and facilitates identification of patients who are misusing or diverting controlled substances. The CDC states that “PDMPs continue to be among the most promising state-level interventions to improve opioid prescribing, inform clinical practice, and protect patients at risk.” PDMPs are necessary tools for state authorized officials to collect, monitor and analyze prescription and dispensing data submitted by pharmacies or medical practitioners. Since medical records are difficult to examine due to necessary laws protecting one’s health information, PDMPs provide critical information for doctors prescribing dangerous, habit forming drugs. While this program may not be drastic or swift enough to put an end to the opioid epidemic anytime soon, it is currently one of our best

Legislation was introduced to regulate pain clinics and a statewide PDMP was implemented (Surratt, et al., 2014). PDMPs are an electronic database for prescribers and dispensers that collect data on prescribed controlled substances and other frequently abused medications (Fass & Hardigan, 2011). According to Florida law, persons dispensing (physicians or pharmacists) controlled substances (schedules II, III, IV) are required to report the dispensing of these medications within 7 days of dispensing (Florida Department of Health, 2015). In addition, prescribers of these controlled substances can access the database to see what drugs have been dispensed to a particular patient (Florida Department of Health, 2015). Finally, certain Florida law enforcement agencies may access this information while investigating an active case involving diversion of controlled substances (Florida Department of Health, 2015). Currently, only Florida licensed pharmacists and physicians who have registered with the Florida Department of Health are granted access to the database (Fass & Hardigan,

The use of controlled substances continues to be a problem within the healthcare industries. As healthcare provider, we are more concerned with pleasing the patients by giving into their demands and improving the organization’s Hospital Consumer Assessment of Healthcare Providers and Systems (HCAHAPS) scores that we get lost in why we chose to go into the healthcare profession, to save people lives and do no

Ashton, C., Kuykendall, David H., Johnson, Michael M. (1999). An Empirical Assessment of the Validity of Explicit and Implicit Process-of-Care Criteria for Quality Assessment. 27(8). 798-808.

Quality measures are strategies that gauge, evaluate or compute health care processes, results, discernments, patient insight, and administrative structure. In addition, quality measures are frameworks that are connected with the capacity to deliver first-class health care and/or that are able to identify with one or more quality objectives for medicinal services. These objectives include: compelling, protected, effective, quiet focused, impartial, and opportune consideration. Quality measures can be used to measure quality improvement, public reporting, and pay-for-reporting programs specific for health care providers (CMS.gov, 2016). There are an assortment of quality measures in which health care organizations can use to determine the status of the care they are delivering. Many are appropriate, but few are chosen for this research paper. Among them are: National Health Care Surveys, Hospital IQR Programs, Scorecards, and Political, Power, and Perception/Data for Decision-making tools.

Moreover, the PQIs can be used as an assessment instrument to help highlight potential healthcare quality concerns and challenges that require further analysis and provide effective data for planning and improvement of health care quality; and provide information to the consumers (U.S. Department of Health & Human Services, 2014). The Inpatient Quality Indicators (IQIs) measures also provide a perspective that includes inpatient mortality for certain procedures and medical conditions; application and utilization of certain procedures for which there are questions of uses