It’s been nearly 15 years since the Joint Commission launched their first national hospital quality program, which required hospitals report on performance measures.   The initial result of the performance measures was a hodgepodge of data gathered non-systematically and was rarely used to improve the quality of care.  Today’s landscape of quality measures looks much different.

There are currently over 600 quality measures endorsed by the National Quality Forum (NQF) that are used to benchmark clinical performance amongst hospitals.  The end goal of these measures is to improve the overall quality of care at all hospitals by encouraging “best practices” and making the results of the measure public.

While the results of core measures are indisputably impressive, the time and expenses associated with gathering the granular clinical data to report on core measures produce concerns.  The major concern facing providers today is how to make the most of their core measures.  This has come on strong since payors have found a way to use these publically reported measures to their advantage.  The time has come for providers to do the same.

Providers can maximize their investments by tapping into their data and using business intelligence (BI) to analyze data sets.  Providers must provide BI tools to their analysts and align their BI endeavors with the organizations strategic initiatives to get the entire organization on the same page.  By doing this, organizations will get more than automated core measures; they can begin to set the basis for what analytics should be used to evaluate performance and ensure that the organization’s initiatives and objectives are met.  From here, an organization can better identify if standardized solutions that come with EMRs will provide them with the analytics they need, or if a customized solution and data warehouse are needed to pack a punch and meet roadmap target.