Health care quality measures are the different measures used to compare and assess the quality of separate health care organizations. These measures can be either a structure, process, outcome or patient experience measure. What are the different types of health care quality measures that your practice could utilize?
Structural Measures
Structure health care quality measures are designed to evaluate the infrastructure of health care organizations and if they can enable quality care. Some of the structure measures can include the experience of the staff, the staffing of facilities, the policy environment and the availability of resources at your practice. For example, in a hospital setting, does your intensive care unit have a critical care specialist on your staff at all times? In a practice setting, do you have the technology to place prescription drug orders electronically?
Process Measures
Process health care quality measures help to demonstrate what you do to maintain or improve health for patients at your practice. These are valuable because they show you clear feedback and a way to improve future performance. Keep in mind that process measures will not be available for every area of care, like whether or not a provider helped to coordinate treatment. An example of a process measure would be if nurses are checking the feet and extremities of diabetes patients to look for wounds.
Outcome Measures
Outcome measures show how effective your practice is at making an impact with health care services or performing health interventions with patients. It’s important to remember that outcome measures are the combination of many factors both in and out of your healthcare practice and not merely a result of only your work. For example, what was the amputation rate for your patients with diabetes? What was the quality of pain relief in the aftermath of knee surgery for your patients? Obviously, there are factors beyond the surface level that go into the answers to these questions.
Patient Experience Measures
Patient experience measures offer feedback on a variety of aspects of care, including interpersonal interactions. It can include things like how physicians communicate patient test results and even how available appointments are for patients seeking routine or urgent care. One patient experience measure could be how long it takes for patients to be seen or what information is given to patients after receiving a diagnosis.
Improve Health Care Quality Measures with Medical Business Partners
Medical Business Partners conducts many coding audits, leads educational trainings and forums and boot camps for staff and physicians. To learn more about our coding and billing services, start-up consulting, credentialing services or other ways we can help you increase your revenues, please contact us through our website or by calling (202) 390-3966
