"Quality measures"

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BACKGROUND: Mobile health applications (apps) have the potential to help individuals with chronic illnesses learn about, monitor, and manage their condition, but these apps are largely unexamined, with the state and direction of development unclear. OBJECTIVE: We performed a systematic review of publicly available apps, directed toward individuals with rheumatoid arthritis (RA); described their current features; and determined areas of unmet need. METHODS: We searched the iTunes and Google Play App Stores for the term "arthritis" and reviewed the descriptions of these apps for specific mentions of RA...

OBJECTIVE: To identify opportunities to improve care value for children with disabilities (CWD), we examined CWD prevalence within a commercially insured population and compared outpatient care quality and annual health plan spending levels for CWD relative to children with complex medical conditions without disabilities, children with chronic conditions that are not complex, and children without disabling, complex, or chronic conditions. METHODS: Cross-sectional study of 1,118,081 person-years of Blue Cross Blue Shield Massachusetts data for beneficiaries aged 1-19 years old during 2008-2012...

BACKGROUND: Prior research documents gender gaps in cardiovascular risk management, with women receiving poorer quality routine care on average, even in managed care systems. Although population health management tools and quality improvement efforts have led to better overall care quality and narrowing of racial/ethnic gaps for a variety of measures, we sought to quantify persistent gender gaps in cardiovascular risk management and to assess the performance of routinely used commercial population health management tools in helping systems narrow gender gaps...

Core measures are standard metrics to reflect the processes of care provided by hospitals. Hospitals in the United States are expected to extract data from electronic health records, automated computation of core measures, and electronic submission of the quality measures data. Traditional manual calculation processes are time intensive and susceptible to error. Automated calculation has the potential to provide timely, accurate information, which could guide quality-of-care decisions, but this vision has yet to be achieved...

Pneumonia is an important cause of morbidity and mortality. Since 2014, the Health Insurance Review and Assessment Service (HIRA) has assessed the overall quality of care among hospitalized adult patients with community-acquired pneumonia (CAP) provided by all medical institutions in Korea. A committee of the Korea Academy of Tuberculosis and Respiratory Diseases developed the hospital inpatient quality measures set for CAP consisting of eight core measures and five monitoring measures. The composite measure score was calculated...

BACKGROUND: Expanding coverage of primary healthcare services such as antenatal care and vaccinations is a global health priority; however, many Haitians do not utilize these services. One reason may be that the population avoids low quality health facilities. We examined how facility infrastructure and the quality of primary health care service delivery were associated with community utilization of primary health care services in Haiti. METHODS: We constructed two composite measures of quality for all Haitian facilities using the 2013 Service Provision Assessment survey...

The use of high-quality, well-characterized biomaterials and their clinical and demographic information for biomedical research has steadily increased in importance over the last 10 years. There are several reasons for this. On the one hand, several studies have shown that even in high-profile scientific papers the description of the origin and characteristics of the biomaterials used is missing or insufficient. On the other hand, it has become generally accepted that small collections of biomaterials are often created under ethically and legally unclear conditions without quality measures and without sufficient sustainability...

BACKGROUND: The patient experience is a crucial part of the measurement of service quality. However, instruments to evaluate experiential quality in the community mental health care of older adults are lacking. Before designing a new instrument, clarity is needed about what is to be measured, and how care experiences are articulated by patients. The study aimed to construct a framework to describe older patients' experience of community mental health and social care. METHODS: Concept mapping blends structured qualitative data collection with quantitative analysis in a mixed method approach...

Technological advances in engineering and cell biology stimulate novel approaches for medical treatment, in particular cell-based therapy. The first cell-based gene therapy against cancer was recently approved by the US Food and Drug Administration. Progress in cancer diagnosis includes a blood test detecting five cancer types. Numerous stem cell phase I/II clinical trials showing safety and efficacy will soon pursue qualifying criteria for advanced therapy medicinal products (ATMP), aspiring to join the first stem-cell therapy approved by the European Medicines Agency...

BACKGROUND: Despite increasing opioid overdose mortality, problems persist in the availability and quality of treatment for opioid use disorder (OUD). Three FDA-approved medications (methadone, buprenorphine, and naltrexone) have high quality evidence supporting their use, but most individuals with OUD do not receive them and many experience relapse following care episodes. Developing and organizing quality measures under a unified framework such as a Cascade of Care could improve system level practice and treatment outcomes...

BACKGROUND: The vancomycin trough level (VTL) is the most widely used pharmacokinetic parameter for monitoring its clinical efficacy. Whether the VTL is affected in patients receiving different vancomycin products has not previously been determined. METHODS: From 2005 to 2015, five vancomycin products, including the innovator (designated as VAN-Lilly) and four generic versions (designated as VAN-A, VAN-B, VAN-C and VAN-D), were sequentially used in a teaching hospital...

Systematic measurement of healthcare services enables evaluation of health professionals' quality of work. Whereas policy makers find measurement a useful mechanism for quality improvement, a public choice perspective implies that physicians would resent such an initiative, which undermines their professional autonomy. In this article, we compare two healthcare systems of economically developed countries - Israel and the UK. Both systems share common features such as universal coverage, strong state intervention, and enthusiasm for New Public Management...

BACKGROUND: Rician noise, bias fields and blur are the common distortions that degrade MRI images during acquisition. Blur is unique in comparison to Rician noise and bias fields because it can be introduced into an image beyond the acquisition stage such as postacquisition processing and the manifestation of pathological conditions. Most current blur assessment algorithms are designed and validated on consumer electronics such as television, video and mobile appliances. The few algorithms dedicated to medical images either requires a reference image or incorporate manual approach...

BACKGROUND:  Value-based payment for care requires the consistent, objective calculation of care quality. Previous initiatives to calculate ambulatory quality measures have relied on billing data or individual electronic health records (EHRs) to calculate and report performance. New methods for quality measure calculation promoted by federal regulations allow qualified clinical data registries to report quality outcomes based on data aggregated across facilities and EHRs using interoperability standards...

AIMS: Assess the relationship between timely treatment intensification and hemoglobin A1C (HbA1C) control quality-of-care performance measures, i.e., HbA1C levels, among patients with uncontrolled type 2 diabetes. MATERIALS AND METHODS: Electronic medical records and diabetes registry data from a large, accountable care organization (ACO) were used to isolate a sample of adult patients with type 2 diabetes who received at least one oral antidiabetes agent and had at least one HbA1C level measurement ≥8...

Background: This study examined receipt of guideline-concordant care (GCC) according to evidence-based treatment guidelines and quality measures and specific types of treatment among older women with breast cancer. Patients and Methods: A total of 142,433 patients aged ≥66 years diagnosed with stage I-III breast cancer between 2007 and 2011 were identified in the SEER-Medicare linked database. Algorithms considering cancer characteristics and the appropriate course of care as per guidelines versus actual care received determined receipt of GCC...

Many best practices have been described for organizing a clinic to manage warfarin. Although these practices may have face validity, they may not be based on empirical analysis. Here, we describe our decade-long effort to apply the Structure-Process-Outcome model of quality measurement as a basis for measuring and improving outpatient warfarin management in the Veterans Health Administration. The purpose of the article is to raise awareness of this body of work with pharmacists who could potentially incorporate the findings of this work into their own practice settings...

Skilled nursing facilities and nursing homes are a care setting that offers increasing opportunities for pharmacists to be leaders when addressing the new updated Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services requirements coupled with the enhanced quality measures reporting. Additionally, the complexity of the medication-related needs and comorbidities of the patients served in long-term care facilities promotes pharmacists practicing to the top of their license. Medication stewardship needs to be an interdisciplinary team activity led by the pharmacist...

AIM: Late-onset sepsis (LOS) is a frequent and important cause of morbidity and mortality in newborn infants admitted to neonatal intensive care units (NICUs). The objective of this study is to evaluate the impact of various infection control quality measures introduced as a bundle on the trends of the LOS in a NICU. METHODS: This was a prospective quality improvement study involving all neonates admitted to a NICU over a 15-year period between 2002 and 2016. The main focus areas of the bundle included collaborative team effort, hand hygiene, education, central line insertion and maintenance bundles and parenteral nutrition...