AHRQuality Indicators™
Mission
The Quality Indicators are measures of health care quality that use readily available hospital inpatient administrative data. AHRQ develops Quality Indicators to provide health care decisionmakers with tools to assess their data.
Visit the AHRQuality Indicators™ Web site.
Relevance
The Quality Indicators are used to highlight potential quality concerns, identify areas that need further study and investigation, and track changes over time. Currently, the AHRQ Quality Indicators are available for use with administrative data in acute care hospitals or emergency departments, settings associated with the highest costs and most serious quality concerns.
Products
The current AHRQ Quality Indicators modules represent various aspects of quality: Patient Safety Indicators, Inpatient Quality Indicators, Prevention Quality Indicators in Inpatient Settings, Pediatric Quality Indicators, and Prevention Quality Indicators in Emergency Department Settings. The Maternal Health Indicators module is a new beta software that was released in 2024.
The AHRQ Quality Indicators are calculated with free software distributed by AHRQ. The software can be used to help hospitals identify quality of care events that might need further study. The software can be applied to any hospital inpatient or emergency department administrative data.
Audiences
The Quality Indicators are designed for program managers, researchers, and others at the Federal, State, and local levels interested in health care quality measurement.
Settings of Care
Acute care hospitals
Partners
- Other agencies may have quality indicators for other settings, so check the National Quality Forum Web site.
- The Healthcare Cost and Utilization Project (HCUP) also produces tools helpful to crosswalks and software.
