Newsroom & Reports

Analysis Paper: Using HQI’s Hospital Similarity Clusters Improves Quality Comparisons

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Key Points:  

  • Evaluating a hospital’s performance against its peers by comparing hospital quality metrics is important, but identifying appropriate peers can be complex.  
  • Clustering hospitals based on their similarity across multiple characteristics — such as inpatient admission volume and hospital type — can help identify more comparable peers.  
  • The Hospital Quality Institute’s (HQI’s) Hospital Similarity Clusters allow for comparisons and provide insights, as demonstrated in a recent article on sepsis mortality rates. 

    • HQIP Update: Hospital Enrollment, Utilization Trends, and Platform Enhancements

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    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.   

    HQI Offers Help to Hospitals for Mandatory Health Equity Reporting

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    At HQI, our mission is to support California hospitals in advancing patient safety and quality improvement. We are here to help you meet the evolving challenges of care delivery — and that includes staying ahead of new state and federal requirements.

    Q4 2024 CHPSO Signal Detection Report

    About HQI’s Sentinel Signal Detection System Report 

    HQI’s sentinel signal detection system automatically detects abnormal changes (i.e., signals) in the incidence of terms detected in Collaborative Healthcare and Patient Safety Organization (CHPSO) patient safety reports. Every quarter, HQI aggregates these signals across reporting hospitals to provide a statewide perspective.  

    Q4 2024 HQIP Signal Detection Report

    About HQI’s Sentinel Signal Detection System Report HQI’s sentinel signal detection system automatically detects abnormal changes (i.e., signals) in the incidence of diagnosis categories from hospital encounter records in the Hospital Quality Improvement Platform (HQIP). Every quarter, HQI aggregates these signals across reporting hospitals to provide a statewide perspective. In Q4 2024 the following patient safety […]

    Q3 2024 CHPSO Signal Detection Report

    This post has been archived and contains information that may be out of date.

    This post has been archived and contains information that may be out of date.About HQI’s Sentinel Signal Detection System Report  HQI’s sentinel signal detection system automatically detects abnormal changes (i.e., signals) in the incidence of terms detected in Collaborative Healthcare and Patient Safety Organization (CHPSO) patient safety reports. Every quarter, HQI aggregates these signals across reporting […]

    Anaphylactic Shock Highlights the Crisis in Medication Safety

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    Key Takeaways 

  • Cases of anaphylaxis have risen by 33% 
  • Anaphylaxis is especially dangerous in perioperative settings where sterile drapes hide visible skin reactions, and sedated patients cannot report their symptoms 
  • Chlorhexidine has emerged as an increasingly frequent trigger 

    • The Relationship Between Hospital Sepsis Bundle Compliance and Sepsis Mortality

    This post has been archived and contains information that may be out of date.

    Key Points 

  • Statewide SEP-1 Sepsis Bundle compliance has increased over time. Sepsis mortality declined overall but spiked during the COVID-19 pandemic, indicating challenges in sustaining improvements. 
  • Higher hospital SEP-1 Sepsis Bundle compliance is associated with lower mortality rates, but the correlation weakened over time (from r = -.31 in 2017 to r = -.17 in 2022) and varied significantly by hospital characteristics such as ownership type and transfer volume. 
  • Investor-owned hospitals and those with smaller sample sizes exhibited weaker or negligible relationships between compliance and mortality, highlighting the role of contextual factors and the need for hospital-specific strategies. 

    • Ozempic and Wegovy: Are These Popular Diabetes and Weight Loss Drugs Associated with Increases in Serious Side Effects?

    This post has been archived and contains information that may be out of date.

    Key Points:

  • Prescriptions for semaglutide, marketed under the names Ozempic and Wegovy, surged almost 3,000% in the U.S. from 2018 to 2022. 
  • Encounters of gallbladder inflammation in California hospitals surged by 492% during the study period, potentially linked to the slowed digestion caused by long-term semaglutide use. 
  • Hospital encounters in California related to acute kidney injuries rose by 18% and cases of low blood sugar (hypoglycemia) increased by 27%, suggesting these may be emerging areas of concern for semaglutide users. 

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