By Healthcare Facilities Today

The Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) recently released a new report, “Health IT-Enabled Quality Measurement: Perspectives, Pathways, and Practice Guidance,” which examines health IT and quality measurement. The report discusses the expectation that health IT-enabled quality measurement can make quality improvement possible.

“Until recently, quality measurement relied almost exclusively on the use of electronic claims data, manual chart abstraction, and patient surveys. However, the enormous, recent growth in the adoption of health IT provides an opportunity for more efficient quality measurement, the development of new types of measures serving various purposes and end users, and tighter integration between quality measurement and quality improvement.

"The sudden increase in availability of digital information raises expectations across all stakeholders who use, work with, or oversee aspects of the healthcare system with respect to how data can be used to improve care, while many of those same stakeholders are simultaneously facing the challenges associated with acquiring new health IT systems and integrating them into the healthcare delivery organization, ” an article on the Healthcare Informatics website quoted the report as stating.

Based on some of the progress taking place, the recommends the following:

• Measurement should be patient-centered.

• Measurement should be supported by end users’ education and collaboration.

• Measurement should be aligned to national priorities.

• Measurement should be actionable and built to work within a system of quality improvement.

• Measurement should leverage available technologies.

The report examines issues around managing two separate phenomena that overlap in practice: quality measurement and improvement activities, and the ongoing development and implementation of information systems, especially clinical information systems, according to the article. 

Read the report.

Read the article.