Quality Quarterly

Use of Hospital Quality Improvement Platform Continues to Increase 

The 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 members, does not connect to a hospital’s 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.   

Since launching in October 2019: 

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

NEW FEATURES AND UPDATES  

  • Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) reports (patient safety indicator, inpatient quality indicator, pediatric quality indicator) and composite calculations are updated daily 
  • Fixed readmission popup in summary charts 
  • Added numerator to top opportunity charts 
  • Updated NHSN data on the 15th of each month and latest update date to report 
  • Extended patient encounter views with additional columns 
  • Dynamic chart titles added to each report to be more descriptive 
  • Added facility name in benchmark plots 
  • Added the number of unique hospitals in comparison groups to tables 
  • Date range picker (calendar view) has replaced the date slider 
  • New route of admission filter 
  • Renaming unknown categories to Unknown/Missing/Invalid  

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 UPDATES 

HQI has received the statewide historical limited data sets of patient-level encounter data (Assembly Bill 2876) for 2021 from HCAI and is in the process of loading the 2021 data into the platform. We will also be updating the emergency department (ED) filter and ED data with inpatient discharges admitted from the ED. Additionally, we are looking to add stratification for several reports. 

ABOUT THE PLATFORM 

Featuresinclude:  

  • 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    
  • ED discharge analytics (comorbidities, volume, demographics, revisits)    
  • Ambulatory surgery demographics  
  • AHRQ 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., nonprofit)   
  • 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.     
  1. 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.     
  1. 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.