Key Takeaways
- 243 of 476 California hospitals have signed participation agreements for the Hospital Quality Improvement Platform (HQIP).
- The reports with the highest number of visits in Q3 2024 were: CMS Hospital Compare Measures over Time Quality Transparency Dashboard (308 visits), Sepsis Incidence, Case Mortality, & Length of Stay (216 visits), and Inland Empire Health Plan 2024 Pay for Performance Program (183 visits).
- New reports include Inpatient Psychiatric Readmission, Pediatric All-Cause Readmission, and Surgical Operative Procedures. Future updates will feature exportable equity reports for Assembly Bill (AB) 1204 compliance and procedure-specific readmission measures.
Introduction & Background
HQIP is a secure, web-based platform that provides quality measures for conditions significantly affected by hospital quality initiatives. The platform 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), and the California Maternal Quality Care Collaborative.
Method
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 hospitals have participation agreements under legal review.
User Traffic & Report Utilization
Figure 2 shows the number of unique logins to HQIP from March 2022 to September 2024, and Table 1 shows the Top 15 HQIP Reports for the last quarter (2024 Q3). Highlights of utilization and HQIP report usage include:
- HQIP usage was the highest during August 2024, with 189 unique logins.
- The average number of unique logins across all times was 98 per month.
- The three most popular HQIP reports during the last quarter were:
- The CMS Hospital Compare Measures over Time Quality Transparency Dashboard (QTD) report
- The Sepsis 1-2-3 – Incidence, Case Mortality, Length of Stay report
- The 2024 Inland Empire Health Plan Hospital Pay for Performance (P4P) Program report
New Features and Updates
Below are the latest updates to HQIP since the last article:
- Third HQIP Quarterly User Group Meeting on Nov. 11; the meetings for 2025 have yet to be scheduled
- New Inpatient Psychiatric Readmission (IPR) report based on the unadjusted 30-day All-Cause Unplanned Readmission following Psychiatric Hospitalization in an Inpatient Psychiatric Facility (READM-30-IPF) measure that is part of the CMS Inpatient Psychiatric Facility Quality Reporting (IPFQR) Program, which works for both psychiatric hospitals and psychiatric units
- New Pediatric All-Cause Readmission (PACR) report based on the unadjusted Pediatric All-Condition Readmission Measure (PACRM) created by the Center of Excellence for Pediatric Quality Measurement (CEPQM) at Boston Children’s Hospital, which works for both children’s and general hospitals
- New Operative Procedures in Surgery Encounters report that presents the incidence of surgeries for inpatient and ambulatory surgery encounters grouped by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) NHSN Surgical Site Infection Events Operative Procedure Codes for ICD-10 and CPT
- New Emergency Department (ED) Encounter Outcome Distributions by Principal Diagnosis report presenting the incidence rates of ED encounters (including those admitted as Inpatient) by the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) Clinical Classifications Software Refined (CCSR) Diagnosis Chapters and Clinical Domains
Discussion & Conclusion
What’s Next
- Update the CMS data in the platform based on the latest CMS Provider Data Catalog release
- Procedure-specific readmission reports (i.e., Total Hip Arthroplasty and/or Total Knee Arthroplasty (THA/TKA) and Coronary Artery Bypass Graft (CABG)) are under development based on the CMS Procedure-Specific Readmission Measure methodology
- Contracting with a vendor to create 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
- Developing an Average/Geometric Average Length of Stay (LOS) by MS-DRG report including O/E ratios compared to CMS estimates
- 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.
Questions or comments about this article should be directed to Scott Masten, vice president, performance analytics.
