Innovative Hospitals Become "Top Performers" Amidst Trends Of Shrinking Resources

CHICAGO and PORTSMOUTH, N.H., Nov. 21, 2014 /PRNewswire/ -- More than 70 of the hospitals recognized in the Top Performers on Key Quality Measures annual report by The Joint Commission partner with Q-Centrix®, the industry leader in quality surveillance and data abstraction services. As regulations and requirements associated with quality performance metrics increase, top performing hospitals are choosing to engage nurse-educated, quality information specialists to abstract data. The Quality Nurse in the Cloud™ model allows hospitals to reduce spending, redirect their internal resources to patient care, and improve quality outcomes.

"We're proud to have so many of our partner hospitals recognized for their outstanding performance by The Joint Commission. It reinforces our belief that hospitals need to engage a new model in order to succeed in today's healthcare environment," explains Milton Silva-Craig, CEO of Q-Centrix.

In addition to cost savings, the Quality Nurse in the Cloud model provided by Q-Centrix offers each partner hospital access to experts in the quality healthcare industry regardless of location. The Q-Centrix quality information specialist team is nurse-educated with distinct clinical capabilities. Many team members were previously in healthcare management and hospital roles, and several previously worked for state Quality Improvement Organizations. Hospitals require this level of expertise in order to keep up with constantly changing regulations and requirements. The expertise of the Q-Centrix team has played a role in convincing 97 percent of hospitals that outsource abstraction to use their services.

"Changes in federal regulation, purchasing practices from payers, and macroeconomic factors are challenging hospitals to keep pace. To meet these challenges, we provide our partner hospitals with technology-enabled services that result in improved quality outcomes and reduced costs," says Silva-Craig.

About the Report
The Joint Commission assessed the performance of accredited hospitals on 46 accountability measures of evidence-based care processes. "Top Performer" designations were awarded based on the accountability measures for:

• Children's asthma care;
• Heart attack;
• Heart failure;
• Immunization;
• Inpatient psychiatric services;
• Perinatal care;
• Pneumonia;
• Stroke care;
• Surgical care and
• Venous thromboembolism (VTE) care

Hospitals were required to select and report on six measure sets in 2013.

To earn "Top Performer" status, a hospital must:

• Meet or exceed 95 percent performance on a composite score for all reported accountability measures;
• Meet or exceed 95 percent performance on each and every reported accountability measure where there are at least 30 denominator cases; and
• Have at least one core measure set with a composite rate of at least 95 percent and where all applicable individual accountability measures have a performance rate of at least 95 percent

Overall, 1,224 of the 3,300 Joint Commission-accredited hospitals that submitted quality data for 2013 were named to the list, an 11 percent increase from the 2012 list.

Memorial Regional Hospital in Hollywood, Fla., was named a top performer in six of 10 measures -- the most out of all Q-Centrix partner hospitals. Specifically, Memorial Regional Hospital was recognized for heart attack, heart failure, pneumonia, surgical care, children's asthma, and hospital-based inpatient psychology*.

*Q-Centrix does not perform quality data abstraction for children's asthma at Memorial Regional Hospital.

About Q-Centrix:
Q-Centrix aims to improve patient safety in the U.S. through the use of market-leading technology coupled with the industry's largest and broadest team of nurse-educated, quality information specialists. Conducting in excess of a million quality data abstractions annually, Q-Centrix is a comprehensive quality partner to hundreds of hospitals; providing clinical surveillance, abstraction, analysis and improvement services.

To learn more about the leader in clinical surveillance and quality data abstraction technology-enabled services, visit www.q-centrix.com.

Contact: Cathy Felts
o 603.294.1145 ext. 131 
m 312.659.8243  
[email protected]

SOURCE Q-Centrix

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