Executive Summary
The Hospital Quality Improvement Platform (HQIP) is a secure, web-based platform that provides quality measures for conditions significantly affected by hospital quality initiatives. HQIP offers hospitals access to clinically detailed, timely reports to help identify opportunities for improvement and areas for focus. It is available at no cost to all California Hospital Association members, does not connect to hospitals’ electronic health records systems, and utilizes data that hospitals already report to the California Department of Health Care Access and Information (HCAI), the National Healthcare Safety Network (NHSN), the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS), and the California Maternal Quality Care Collaborative.
Key Points
- 243 of 476 California hospitals have signed participation agreements for HQIP.
- The reports with the highest number of visits in Quarter 4 (Q4) 2024 were: The 2024 Inland Empire Health Plan Hospital Pay for Performance (P4P) Program report (239 visits), Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) Patient Safety Indicators (PSI) Rates, Trends, & Benchmarks (217 visits) and NHSN health care-associated infection (HAI) Rates, Trends & Benchmarks (162 visits).
- Future updates will feature exportable hospital and system equity reports to comply with Assembly Bill (AB) 1204, along with procedure-specific readmission measures.
- A revamped and enhanced version of HQIP has been deployed with improved processing speeds, quicker analytics, and stratification available for deeper data dives.
Methodology
Hospital recruitment data were analyzed to assess changes in HQIP participation from last quarter. HQIP team members were surveyed to identify updates to data as well as completed or forthcoming changes in platform reports and features.
Results
Hospital Recruitment
Figure 1 illustrates HQI’s progress in enrolling California hospitals in HQIP since its launch in October 2019. Key recruitment highlights include:
- 333 of 476 hospitals have seen a demo of the platform.
- 243 hospitals have executed participation agreements for the platform.
- 93 have participation agreements under legal review.
User Traffic & Report Utilization
Figure 2 shows the number of unique logins to HQIP from March 2022 to December 2024, and Table 1 shows the top 15 HQIP reports for the last quarter (2024 Q4). Highlights of utilization and HQIP report usage include:
- HQIP usage was the highest during August 2024, with 191 unique log-ins.
- The average number of unique log-ins across all times was 103 per month.
- The three most popular HQIP reports during the last quarter were:
- The 2024 Inland Empire Health Plan Hospital Pay for Performance (P4P) Program report
- AHRQ PSI Rates, Trends, & Benchmarks
- NHSN HAI Rates, Trends & Benchmarks
New Features and Updates
Below are the latest updates to HQIP since the last article:
- HQIP Quarterly User Meeting on March 27 from 10-11 a.m.
- A new and improved version of HQIP offers significant increase in speed, including but not limited to loading reports, processing hospital encounters data and on the fly calculations, and stratification for deeper data dives
- Average/Geometric Average LOS by MS-DRG report, including O/E ratios compared to CMS estimates
- Update the CMS data in the platform based on the latest CMS Provider Data Catalog release
Conclusion
What’s Next
- Procedure-specific readmission reports (i.e., Total Hip Arthroplasty and/or Total Knee Arthroplasty and Coronary Artery Bypass Graft) are under development based on the CMS Procedure-Specific Readmission Measure methodology
- Exportable, pre-filled equity reports using the available HQIP data as Excel templates for hospitals and systems to edit and submit to HCAI that will allow them to meet the AB 1204 HCAI Hospital Equity Reporting Requirements with minimal additional effort
- Automated reports are planned for next year to streamline the production of local health plan reports on data uploads and measure outcomes across network hospitals
For more information about the HQIP or to schedule a 30-minute demonstration, visit the HQI website or email hqianalytics@hqinstitute.org. To provide feedback about features or measures, email hqianalytics@hqinstitute.org.