Quality Quarterly

Hospital Quality Improvement Platform Membership Report 

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Use of HQI’s updated Hospital Quality Improvement Platform (HQIP) — a quality analytics system that consolidates disparate data sources into a single, statewide platform — continues to increase as more hospitals complete their contract reviews.  

The secure, web-based platform provides risk-adjusted quality measures for conditions most affected by hospital quality initiatives. Through the platform, hospitals gain access to clinically rich, timely reports to help easily identify opportunities for improvement and areas for focus. It is free to all California Hospital Association (CHA) members, does not connect to your electronic health records system, and uses data hospitals already report to the California Department of Health Care Access and Information (HCAI), the National Healthcare Safety Network (NHSN), and the California Maternal Quality Care Collaborative (CMQCC).  

Since launching in October 2019: 

  • 340 of 469 hospitals have seen a demo of the platform  
  • 136 hospitals have executed agreements  
  • 148 hospitals have participation agreements under legal review  

NEW FEATURES AND UPDATES  

  • An improved inpatient admission source filter that provides more detail 
  • Updated NHSN data on the 15th of each month 

Additional reports and features will be added during each quarter of 2022. The HQI team may be able to create and customize reporting to meet your hospital’s needs. If you have input about features and measures you would like to see, email our HQI technical team at HQIAnalytics@hqinstitute.org.  

WHAT’S TO COME IN FUTURE UPDATE 

It’s time to request statewide historical limited data sets of patient-level encounter data (Assembly Bill 2876) for 2021 from HCAI using our HCAI HQIP Limited Data Set Request Instructions and justification grids for inpatient and emergency department/ambulatory surgery data. Once received and uploaded into the HQIP, you will have more robust data analytics spanning between 2019 and 2022.  

ABOUT THE PLATFORM 

Features include: 

  • Access to hospital performance data from various sources, integrated into a centralized platform   
  • Tools to understand your hospital’s quality performance and compare standardized measures to statewide benchmarks and peers    
  • The ability to explore same-year quality performance for your hospital, rather than waiting eight to 20 months for statewide files to be released    
  • An intuitive interface that provides a window into inpatient and emergency quality indicators      
  • Secure data within HIPAA-qualified encrypted data systems

Quality measuresinclude: 

  • Inpatient case mix demographics, comorbidities, index   
  • Emergency department (ED) discharge analytics (comorbidities, volume, demographics, revisits)   
  • Ambulatory surgery demographics 
  • Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality patient safety indicators   
  • Sepsis incidence and mortality   
  • Maternity measures   
  • Discharge volume by source (inpatient, ED, ambulatory surgery)  
  • Social determinants of health  
  • Chronic physical and behavioral conditions  
  • NHSN measures, trends, and details 

There are 15 options for benchmarking yourhospital’s performance:  

  • All CHA member hospitals   
  • Other critical access hospitals   
  • Other rural hospitals  
  • Other children’s hospitals   
  • Other teaching hospitals  
  • Other hospitals with the same payer (e.g., IEHP, PHP) 
  • Your hospital’s past performance   
  • Other CHA member hospitals:   
    • In the same health system   
    • In the same general region  
    • In the same health service area  
    • In the same metropolitan statistical area  
    • With similar bed size  
    • With the same type of control (e.g., non-profit)  
    • With the same license type  
    • With similar Medicare payer mix  
    • With similar Medi-Cal payer mix  
    • With the same adult/children’s trauma level designation   
    • With similar inpatient discharge volume  
    • With same ED service level (e.g., basic, standby)  
    • With similar outpatient visit volume  

For hospitals interested in participating, it can be done in three easy steps:   

  1. Execute the cost-free HQI-Hospital Service Agreement and  HQI-Hospital Business Associated Agreement.    
  2. Follow our HCAI Patient-Level Administrative Data (SIERA) HQIP Upload Instructions to securely submit copies of recent HCAI Patient-Level Administrative Data for ED, ambulatory surgery, and inpatient encounters.    
  3. Follow our NHSN HQIP Group Join Instructions to confer rights to HQI’s NHSN group on the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Secure Access Management Services web portal.  

For more information about the HQIP or to schedule a 30-minute demo, visit the HQI website or email HQIAnalytics@HQInstitute.org