First Steps to Developing Standardized Quality Performance Measures Based in Electronic Health Records
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.