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In the News: Home Health Quality Improvement Organization Support
Although the Home Health Quality Improvement (HHQI) National Campaign is over, the resources that this initiative generated continue to be expanded upon and available to providers. The website location for these resources is http://medqic.org. The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) developed and support this comprehensive online resource. This website is intended to be the primary source for quality improvement information on Medicare's National Quality Improvement Priority Topics. The health care setting specific links located within this website include physician offices, nursing homes, hospitals and home health. While the home page of the MedQIC website features basic materials, the home page also contains changing articles, available under its “What’s New Highlights” location.
MedQIC Monthly Newsletter
One changing feature on this website’s home page is the MedQIC Monthly Newsletter. This is an ongoing source of information relative to quality improvement and best practice initiatives. The current month’s newsletter is posted on the website, and links are present to connect the online user to previous newsletters. These newsletters provide information to new and existing MedQIC audiences and contain featured stories, as well as timely articles. The newsletter provides information to the health care industry in general. The MedQIC Content and Collaboration Team requests that readers submit materials for inclusion. This team encourages readers to share their stories in the newsletter in order that information sharing occurs within and between provider settings and staff.
Home Health Tab
The Home Health Section of this website is separated into a number of diverse and useful headings. Included in the resource section are many tools. One example of these tools is the Best Practice Intervention Package - Hospitalization Risk Assessment. This package consists of a comprehensive manual designed for ease of use by the provider organization. Contained in this specific package are separate Hospitalization Risk Assessment tools for organization leaders, nurses, therapists, medical social workers and home care aides. The packet also includes tracking and trending tools. In addition, a prototype of a physician notification for patients assessed to be a high risk for hospitalization, posters, handouts and PowerPoint slides for educating staff and referral sources about this important care element are provided.
The HHQI campaign is another major content heading under the Home Health home page. Other informational resource topics included in this website link are:
- Agency-wide Improvement
- Quality Improvement
- Care Transitions
- Disease Management
- Organizational Culture
- Telehealth
- STAR
- Publicly Reported Measures
- Other Care Topics[http://medqic.org/]
Each topic link contains online and paper print resources, tools, education sessions and information specific to the home care setting. The STAR section outlines the established program titled; “Using the Setting Targets - Achieving Results (STAR)” website, through which home health agencies can set and monitor outcome targets for their specific Plans of Action developed for the Publicly Reported Outcome Quality Measures. Agencies are asked to register to participate and once registered, participants are able to track their progress towards the Quality Measure they select. Providers are also able to benchmark their scores over the time continuum. There are two foci of STAR; first, continual quality improvement and second, making tools available that are user friendly.
Home health, hospice and private care providers have a wealth of resources targeted towards best practices and quality improvement within this CMS-sponsored website. For ongoing updates and to explore the tools and resources, please access http://medqic.org and then explore the resources under other provider settings, as well as those in the Home Health provider section. In August 2008, the new three-year contracts will be assigned for CMS’s Quality Improvement Organizations (QIO] and this information will also be available via http://medqic.org.
Reference:
http://medqic.org/dcs/ContentServer?cid=1200602363686&pagename=Medqic%2FMQTools%2FToolTemplate&c=MQTools
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