First Steps to Developing Standardized Quality Performance Measures Based in Electronic Health Records
Development of electronic health record-based indicators for ambulatory and integrated health care systems
Researchers from Park Nicollet Institute and the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health conducted preliminary work to develop a standardized set of electronic-health-record-based quality performance measures—"e-indicators."
As part of their efforts, the researchers:
- Completed a search through the research literature for existing quality performance e-indicators.
- Examined the experiences of five different integrated health care delivery systems in developing, testing and implementing quality performance e-indicators.
Key Findings:
- The results of the literature search revealed that few previous studies focused specifically on the development of quality indicators for the new electronic environment.
- The experience of the five health care delivery systems (profiled in a report available online) revealed that:
- Performance measures become much more clinically relevant when they are based on the electronic health record.
- Establishing the validity and reliability of data extracted from the electronic health record is a key challenge to the development and use of e-indicators.
- Measures that translated established quality indicators had the easiest transition into electronic health record implementation.