Quality Quarterly

Recruitment Jumps for Hospital Quality Improvement Platform

Recruitment for HQI’s updated Hospital Quality Improvement Platform (HQIP) — a quality analytics system that consolidates disparate data sources into a single, statewide platform — jumped this quarter due to ongoing collaborations with Local Health Plans of California.   

The secure, web-based platform 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 your electronic health records system, and uses data that hospitals already report to the California Department of Health Care Access and Information, the National Healthcare Safety Network, and the California Maternal Quality Care Collaborative.   

Since launching in October 2019: 

  • 346 of 476 hospitals have seen a demo of the platform.  
  • 155 hospitals have executed agreements.  
  • 137 hospitals have participation agreements under legal review. 

NEW FEATURES AND UPDATES  

  • Signal detection for encounters data (inpatient, emergency department, and ambulatory surgery) is now available on the platform. See the latest trends for specific ICD-10 categories within your hospital.  
  • Updated SEP-3 codes that are now reflected in the reporting 
  • Updated the platform’s case deduping process  
  • Updated the categories in the social determinants of health report 

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 is looking to improve various reports, such as readmission and mortality, by adding measures for diagnosis- and procedure-specific rates that track the definitions used by CMS for the inpatient Quality Reporting Program. HQI is also developing new reports around severe maternal mortality, pediatric quality measures, disparities in quality outcomes, and rural hospital quality and reporting measures. 

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 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.     
  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.   

More details about the platform, including features, quality measures, and options for benchmarking performance can be found on the HQIP web page.To schedule a 30-minute demo, visit the HQI website or email HQIAnalytics@HQInstitute.org.