Examples of Hospital Quality Measures for Consumers

From the available set of hospital measures, you can choose among hundreds of measures that address important aspects of inpatient care. Here are some examples of hospital quality measures that research evidence and practical experience suggest are appropriate for reporting to consumers. The list is categorized by the Institute of Medicine’s domains for a quality health care system; for definitions, go to The Six Domains of Health Care Quality.

Patient Safety Measures

• Percentage of surgery patients with surgical complications or postoperative infection.
• Rates at which patients fall and incur injury during a hospital stay.
• Use of electronic systems for entering medication orders.
• Patient mortality rates by type of condition (e.g., heart attack, hip fracture, pneumonia) or by type of procedure (e.g., coronary artery bypass graft surgeries, valve surgeries, hip replacement).

Effectiveness Measures

• Percentage of patients receiving recommended hospital care for specific conditions such as heart attack, pneumonia care, and prevention of surgical infection.

Patient-Centeredness Measures

• Patients’ reports on the care and service they received from the hospital.
• Provision of care instructions upon hospital discharge for certain conditions.

Timeliness Measures

• Patients’ reports on the timeliness of care and service they received from the hospital.

Efficiency Measures

• Utilization of hospital services or procedures as measured by the hospital discharge rate or average length of stay.

Equity Measures

While not associated with any particular IOM domain, descriptive measures can convey the hospital’s capacity for providing quality of care and service.
Examples include:

• Number of beds and the types of services available.
• Whether the hospital is accredited or has other types of specialty certification.
• The use of electronic patient medical records or prescription ordering systems.
• Percentage of physicians who are board-certified.
• Nurse-to-patient staffing ratios.

To help consumers consider both the quality and cost of hospital care, report sponsors sometimes supplement quality scores with information that serves as a proxy for costs, such as the average amount that insurers pay hospitals for certain medical conditions or procedures.

Also in "Measures of Hospital Quality"

• Examples of Hospital Quality Measures for Consumers
• Major Hospital Measurement Sets
• Databases Used for Hospital Quality Measures