Key Takeaways:
- More than half of all California hospitals now participate in Hospital Quality Improvement Platform (HQIP). Fifty-eight hospitals enrolled in just the last quarter.
- Several new reports have been added to HQIP, including sepsis readmissions and missed sepsis opportunities.
- HQI is working to help hospitals meet the upcoming Department of Health Care Access and Information (HCAI) Hospital/System Equity Reporting requirements by making a “report in a box” for their use.
Enrollment in the Hospital Quality Improvement Platform (HQIP) hit 50% of all California hospitals in the last quarter due to increased registration among hospitals participating in the Los Angeles Care Health Plan’s Hospital Pay-for-Performance (P4P) incentive program. Recent updates to HQIP include a new report covering unplanned patient readmissions within 30 days of being discharged that is more closely based on Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) methodology.
HQIP is a secure, web-based platform that provides 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 hospitals’ electronic health records systems, 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:
- 333 of 476 hospitals have seen a demo of the platform
- 242 hospitals have executed agreements
- 94 hospitals have participation agreements under legal review
New Features and Updates
In addition to participation expansion, here’s what’s new to HQIP since the last update:
- HQI held its third HQIP Quarterly User Group Meeting on August 22. The next meeting is scheduled for November 21 from 10 to 11 a.m. (PT)
- Updated the integrated SpeedTrack Analytics reports based on April 15, 2024 Proposed Regulations to help hospitals meet the HCAI Hospital Equity Reporting requirements that start in September 2025
- New Sepsis 1-2-3 reports presenting incidence and mortality for multiple sepsis definitions, along with readmissions and missed sepsis opportunities
- New condition-specific readmission reports (i.e., AMI, Heart Failure, COPD, Pneumonia) based on the CMS methodology
- Updated the CMS Quality Reporting Program Data based on their July 2024 release
To provide feedback about features or measures, email: HQIAnalytics@hqinstitute.org.
What’s Next
- Procedure-specific and inpatient acute psychiatric readmission reports are in development based on the CMS methodology and 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
- Developing a report using 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
- Contracting to create exportable HCAI hospital/system equity reports that allow hospitals to meet the HCAI health 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 later this year to streamline the production of local health plan reports on data uploads and measure outcomes across network hospitals
- A new emergency department (ED) report presenting the incidence rates of ED encounters (including those admitted as Inpatient) by Clinical Classifications Software Refined (CCSR) Diagnosis Chapters and CCSR Clinical domains developed by Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ)
- Also in development is a new report that will present the incidence of Ambulatory Surgery encounters grouped by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s (CDC) NHSN Surgical Site Infection Events Operative Procedure Code Mappings (ICD-10-PCS and CPT)
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 up 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 measures include:
- Inpatient case mix demographics, comorbidities, and 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 many options for benchmarking your hospital’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, PHC)
- 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, all it takes are three easy steps:
- Execute the cost-free HQI-Hospital Service Agreement and HQI-Hospital Business Associated Agreement.
- Follow the 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.
- Follow our NHSN HQIP Group Join Instructions to confer rights to HQI’s NHSN group on the CDC’s Secure Access Management Services web portal.
For more information about the HQIP or to schedule a 30-minute demonstration, visit the HQI website or email HQIAnalytics@HQInstitute.org.
