Science of Quality Measurement
The Science of Quality Measurement Program in the Mayo Clinic Kern Center for the Science of Health Care Delivery evaluates the methodologies of hospital quality measures used in federal pay-for-performance programs and hospital ratings.
New knowledge is constantly being developed in healthcare. At the same time, professional associations, government agencies, health insurance providers and others identify measurements to quantify outcomes, cost of care, patient-reported experience data, community needs and healthcare workforce wellness. Some of these measurements are used in determining how much the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) will reimburse for patient care. Others are used to develop ranking or rating systems to simplify choices for potential patients or referring providers.
Science of Quality Measurement Program experts develop the next generation of value, equity, and quality measures that gauge the health care received by patients and populations. The multidisciplinary program team focuses on providing rigorous evaluation and recommendations for the development, use, and improvement of quality measurement tools and methodologies.
Mayo Clinic defines quality as a comprehensive look at all aspects of a patient's experience and recognizes that the responsibility to provide the highest quality of care persists at every intersection with people seeking knowledge or care from Mayo. The Science of Quality Measurement Program helps ensure that all care provided at Mayo Clinic is evidence-based and critically examines best practices to ensure they are — and remain — the gold standard in healthcare.
Focus areas
- Building and maintaining Mayo Clinic's quality data platform.
- Contributing to the national hospital quality community via peer-reviewed scientific publications and participation in expert panels to guide methodological innovation and improvement.
- Enhancing Mayo Clinic's ability to provide high-quality, value-based care.
- Evaluating whether hospital rankings and ratings are based on valid measures and methodologies.
- Providing the Mayo Clinic practice with customized dashboards and predictive analytics containing practice-actionable, near-real-time assessments of the quality of care.
Projects
The Science of Quality Measurement Program is a hybrid team with experts from both Mayo Clinic Quality and the Mayo Clinic Kern Center for the Science of Health Care Delivery. They oversee key projects and initiatives across Mayo Clinic.
Quality data dashboards
Mayo Clinic has real-time quality dashboards that pull data from the electronic health record and display more than 200 risk-adjusted quality measures. These measures include all metrics used to inform hospital pay-for-performance programs, rankings and ratings including:
These dashboards give the practice meaningful and actionable information. They provide insight into performance for particular service lines and at more granular levels, such as a single nursing unit. The operational insights provide evidence-based opportunities for Mayo Clinic to drive quality improvement.
Quality data platform
The Science of Quality Measurement Program team built, monitors and improves a platform to expand Mayo Clinic's ability to access real-time quality data. The platform provides:
- A technology-based framework for predictive analytics.
- Real-time signal and trend detection.
- More efficient modeling of data and measures portrayed in the quality data dashboards.
The platform allows users to customize views and performance measures for operational areas across Mayo Clinic.
The program team is developing courses to teach Mayo Clinic staff how to efficiently access the data and use it to improve patient care and the way that care is delivered.
Impact of COVID-19 on data and quality measures
It remains largely unknown how factors such as state-mandated elective surgery stoppages, public fear of going to hospitals, and an extraordinarily narrow focus on COVID-19 affected the quantity and quality of non-COVID-19 care delivered in the U.S. health system from 2020 to 2023.
This project seeks to describe how quality outcomes, including mortality and readmissions, were affected by the pandemic. The results will be used to engage with hospital rankings and ratings stakeholders regarding assessment of hospital quality during the pandemic.
Related publications:
Assessing medical procedure overuse
A key component of high-value care is avoiding the inappropriate or unnecessary use of medical procedures. Such overuse is reported by external hospital quality stakeholders including the Lown Institute and U.S. News & World Report. The Science of Quality Measurement Program is evaluating and improving methodologies for assessing spinal fusion, renal artery stenting, knee arthroscopy and other procedures that may be commonly overused.
Composite and Hospital Quality Index
U.S. hospital quality rankings and ratings use different methodologies and are often weakly correlated to each other or to real patient experiences. This causes confusion for patients and hospital quality staff. The Science of Quality Measurement Program team developed the Composite Hospital Quality Index to combine hospital quality ratings. Now, the team is developing a calculator for patients to explore hospital performance on this composite quality index.
Related publication:
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