CMS AND JCAHO MAKE IT EASIER FOR CONSUMERS TO ASSESS HOSPITAL QUALITY

[CAL/AAEM News Service]

CMS AND JCAHO MAKE IT EASIER FOR CONSUMERS TO ASSESS HOSPITAL QUALITY

September 15, 2004


Medicare Teams with Hospital Accrediting Organization on National Measures for Hospital
Performance

In an effort to help consumers make the best decisions about their
health care, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) and the
Joint Commission on the Accreditation of Healthcare Organizations
(JCAHO) are adopting standardized performance measures for hospitals to
report how well they provide health care services, CMS Administrator
Mark B. McClellan, M.D., Ph.D., announced today.

"We are strongly committed to providing consistent measures," McClellan
said.  "And CMS will continue to work hard with health care consumers,
providers and other stakeholders to make available comprehensive and
reliable quality measures on health care providers."

CMS and JCAHO today issued a technical manual for hospital quality
measures that provides common definitions for each of the quality
measures that are being collected and reported.  Hospitals will use
these common definitions to report on their quality for both the
National Voluntary Hospital Reporting Initiative and for JCAHO
accreditation, beginning with January 2005 discharges.

Participating hospitals currently report data giving consumers
information about performance in three medical conditions - heart
attack, heart failure and pneumonia.  These conditions can result in
hospital stays and are common among people with Medicare.

This effort joins other CMS activities to improve the quality of care
for Medicare beneficiaries living in nursing homes and receiving care
from dialysis centers, home health agencies and health plans through
public reporting of measures that assess the quality of care that is
delivered.

Since 2002, CMS has participated in a joint public-private initiative
to foster public reporting of the quality of care available in the
nation's hospitals.

The initial set of measures selected for use in the voluntary hospital
reporting initiative were measures common to CMS and the JCAHO, but
there were technical differences between the ways that the measures were
specified by the two organizations. These technical differences
increased the data collection and reporting burdens on hospitals.

"CMS and JCAHO are making it easier for hospitals to report on the
quality of their services, making it even easier for beneficiaries to
make apples-to-apples comparisons," McClellan said. "This is expected to
lead to improvements in the quality of care available in all
hospitals."

"CMS is committed to the goal of moving toward a single comprehensive
set of quality measures to be used by all stakeholders.  This agreement
between CMS and JCAHO to adopt identical measures is an important first
step in this direction," said Sean Tunis, MD, CMS' Chief Medical
Officer.

In addition to the common set of measure specifications, the two
organizations expressed their desire to assure that alignment of these
and other measures will be maintained in the future, including common
schedules for future modifications, which will help hospitals plan and
implement changes to their own systems for quality monitoring.
"Through the release of the joint technical manual, CMS and JCAHO have
demonstrated their commitment to be responsive to the needs of hospitals
in the pursuit of quality improvement," Tunis said.

The technical manual published today can be found on the CMS website at
http://www.cms.hhs.gov/quality/hospital/


Source: CMS Media Affairs (http://www.cms.hhs.gov/) 


=====
Cyrus Shahpar & Brian Potts 
Managing Editors, CAL/AAEM News Service 
UC-Irvine



		
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