Hospital Quality Alliance (HQA) is a collaborative program that releases information to the public on specific health care processes within hospitals. This hospital data is shared with the public through the government’s health care consumer website, Hospital Compare. The goal of reporting this information to the public is to improve the quality of care across the country and to empower health care consumers with useful information to be used when selecting health care services. The Hospital Compare website offers national data that has been voluntarily submitted.
A Brief History
The HQA was established in 2003 as a collaborative partnership between health care organizations. Their goal is to collect and share important hospital performance data. The founding members of the HQA program are the American Hospital Association, the Federation of American Hospitals and the Association of American Medical Colleges. Other organizations include federal agencies, regulatory bodies, health care provider unions, insurance companies and health care consumer groups.
In the beginning, there were only three measures of common hospital patient conditions: pneumonia and heart attack and failure. Today, there are 10 performance measures used to assess the quality of hospital outpatient care services. These new 10 measures are not related to the existing 32 inpatient clinical process measures tracked by the HQA. While some of the new measures are slightly similar to existing inpatient care metrics, the new measures focus on patients who are either not admitted to an urban hospital or admitted to a rural hospital. Many hospitals utilize internal technology solutions to track their own performance in order to enhance patient care and communication between various health care providers.
Sample New Measures
When it comes to patients with heart related problems, the new measures track if they immediately receive aspirin on arrival in the emergency department and if they receive fibrinolytic therapy within 30 minutes or arrival. These measures track the average time from the patient’s arrival in the emergency department to the time when they receive an electrocardiogram (ECG). One of the 10 measures track if patients who have pneumonia are given antibiotics within four hours of checking in. Pneumonia patients who are older than 65 are screened verify they have received the pneumococcal vaccine prior to previous discharge.
Quality initiatives and process improvement programs focus on provider outcomes, organizational processes and patient safety. Many hospitals invest in technology that supports clinical practices, information sharing and procedure enforcement. State-of-the-art software allows health care providers to leverage clinical information systems to enforce practices. For instance, when patients who identify themselves as smokers are admitted, there are system triggers that alert staff and physicians concerning smoking cessation. Bar-code scanning systems ensure that health care providers administer the right medication at the right time to the right patient.
Health care consumers can use the insightful information and comparative quality measures when selecting a long-term health care facility. Be aware that these performance measures must be considered along with many other factors, such as insurance, location, consumer reviews and customer service levels. The Hospital Quality Alliance provides critical data that helps health care consumers make the right decisions.
