|
|
|
| The Vermont Health Care Quality Report 2008 |
Ch2: Measuring Quality of Care Ch3: Chronic Illness in Vermont
|
|
Prevention Quality Indicators (Preventable hospitalizations) (click for printable PDF) How can the prevention quality indicators be used? Sometimes hospitalization and complications are attributable to factors outside of the direct control of the healthcare system. The prevention quality indicators provide a good starting point for assessing the quality of care in a community. The Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) Prevention Quality Indicators (PQIs) are a tool that takes advantage of hospital administrative data to identify and measure the events of hospitalization for “ambulatory sensitive conditions”. These are conditions for which good outpatient care can potentially prevent the need for hospitalization. The PQIs assess the healthcare system as a whole, and especially the quality of outpatient care in preventing medical complications. Examining rates for a single year provides a snapshot view into the community for each condition. Trending these indicators over time, affords the ability to assess whether observed differences are likely the result of normal variation (i.e., rates differ from average in a single year) or if observed differences reflect a pattern (i.e., rates differ from average for longer periods of time). Subsequently this longitudinal perspective may lead to the identification of areas that serve as a model of excellence or areas with unmet healthcare needs. Addressing these needs, and providing effective and timely outpatient care, may help to avoid serious complications and use of costly resources such as hospitalization. What are the prevention quality indicators? Each indicator presents area-level utilization with the numerator obtained from the Vermont hospital discharge data and the denominator obtained from the U.S. Census of at-risk persons in each county in Vermont. Each indicator presents county-level rates for calendar year 2006, a 5-year trend, and a comparison to the National and Northeast rates.
|
|
