About This Site
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Be An Informed Healthcare Consumer
The information on this Web site will help you, your loved ones and your healthcare
provider compare certain quality of care statistics among New Jersey hospitals that
have given data to the New Jersey Hospital Association. This quality information
will not only help you make good decisions about your healthcare, but also encourage
all healthcare providers to continue their efforts to improve healthcare quality
in our state. Consumers can use this information as a starting point for educating
themselves and their families about hospital quality, for talking to your primary
care provider about choosing a hospital and for asking questions while receiving
care in a hospital. (For more information on healthcare quality, we've assembled
a list of helpful Web links on our Resources page.)
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About Quality Measures
"Healthcare quality" means different things to different people. For many people,
it means a successful outcome of your hospital stay, such as surviving a heart attack
or delivering a healthy baby without complications. Others may define "quality"
as professional and compassionate care by nurses, physicians and other hospital
personnel.
For still others, "healthcare quality" may mean that the hospital carefully followed
all guidelines and standards of appropriate care, based on medical research. It's
that type of quality data that is found on this Web site. The U.S. Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services and the
New Jersey Department of Health
and Senior Services publish data on how well hospitals follow well-established
processes of good care. This information is currently available for the conditions
of myocardial infarction (or more commonly, a heart attack), heart failure and pneumonia.
In the future, the two agencies will expand their efforts to report on how well
hospitals follow guidelines on the best use of antibiotics to prevent infection
for patients undergoing certain surgeries.
This Web site also includes information on the many quality improvement activities
that New Jersey hospitals participate in. Through its
Quality Institute, the New Jersey Hospital Association encourages the state's
hospitals to take part in a variety of performance improvement initiatives including
its own statewide efforts to improve care, along with the Institute for Healthcare Improvement's two nationwide efforts,
the 100,000 Lives Campaign and the Protecting 5 Million Lives from Harm Campaign. Many hospitals in New Jersey also are active
in the VHA's patient safety programs.
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Measure Methodology
The data presented here was created from publicly available data that is collected
by the New Jersey Discharge Data Collection System. It includes data collected in
the same way by all hospitals and reported to the New Jersey Department of Health
and Senior Services on all inpatients discharged from acute care hospitals in New
Jersey. This system contains data about patients such as age, sex, date of admission
and date of discharge as well as diagnosis codes and procedure codes on all patients
admitted to a hospital.
To analyze this data, we used a subset of data from a clinical outcomes evaluation
system developed jointly by QuadraMed and the New Jersey Hospital Association in
1993, called Quantim® Performance Measurement System. This system meets
all rules for measurement systems acceptable for submitting data to The Joint Commission a national organization that accredits
hospitals.
This data has been collected and distributed to all New Jersey Hospital Association
members in their Comparative Clinical Outcomes Report since 1995 to help hospitals
identify opportunities to improve the quality of care provided to their communities.
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