Accessing Data for QI

Performance Measure Data Definition Worksheet

The Performance Measure Data Definition Worksheet can be used during the Quality Improvement (QI) process to assess the alignment of your health center’s workflows and documentation and your EHR vendor’s reporting logic processes.
The Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology (ONC) EHR Certification criteria requires EHR vendors to use eCQM (electronic Clinical Quality Measure) specifications to define measures. Therefore, reported data for a measure should be consistent regardless of EHR vendor. In practice, however, it is important to confirm that your EHR vendor’s reporting logic is consistent with your health center’s definition and workflows, and vice versa, as outlined in this worksheet.

Addressing Childhood Obesity in Health Centers

The HITEQ Center interviewed ten health centers and health center partners to identify solutions and promising practices for addressing childhood obesity across the health center program. The focus included how health centers are meeting the Uniform Data System (UDS) measure and how they are taking further steps to identify and intervene with those at risk of obesity leveraging health information technology, electronic health records, and the data they have. Seven key areas are identified in the resulting issue brief.

Data Driven Programming to Maximize Care for Residents of Public Housing

This presentation walks public housing-focused health centers, such as those with public housing primary care grants, through available UDS reports and tools that can be used for informing services and planning. A number of specific examples are shown of how information from the UDS can be used for improvement. Other information provided serves as a reference for reporting of public housing on Table 4 of the UDS.

Integrating Internal and External Data into a Health Center’s Primary Care Services

This brief discusses the importance of integrated data, and provides examples of how other health centers have integrated and utilized oral health, colon cancer screening data, and other data within primary care.

Utilizing and Integrating Behavioral Health Data into a Health Center’s Primary Care Services

As more health centers seek to break down siloes that can fragment patient care, collaboration with or integration of behavioral health care has been strengthened, although data integration remains difficult and privacy remains paramount. This brief discusses some of the approaches, successes, and challenges in integrating behavioral health data within primary care services.

Data Dictionary Tool and Template

This Data Dictionary provides a single point of reference for data mapping and interpretation for all of the indicators in your quality reports. Organization of the data definitions in this tool provides a reference for the team of all such definitions that impact reports and alerts in the analytics application.

EHR Optimization Guides

Million Hearts^® EHR Optimization Guides help healthcare professionals leverage their EHR systems to excel in the ABCS. Through helpful step by step instructions, the Guides illustrate how providers can use their EHR products to find, use, and improve data on the Million Hearts^® clinical quality measures. Ultimately, these guides facilitate the identification of at-risk patients, helping clinical teams across the country protect their patients from heart attacks, strokes, and other cardiovascular events.

Accessing your Data

Intended to assist in ensuring full use and understanding of capabilities of current system and assessing the need for additional population health management or data integration tools, this checklist describes the steps health center quality improvement and IT staff can take to ensure they are maximizing the population health management and other capacity of current systems. It Included are questions around the system itself, report generation, training, and resulting data, as well as considerations before and after you contact your vendor.

Measuring Telehealth Success: You Can't Achieve it if You Can't Measure It

More than a year into the Covid-19 pandemic, it is now obvious that telehealth — in the form of a hybrid care delivery model that blends virtual and in-person care — is not a fad, but a healthcare delivery option that is here to stay. Healthcare leaders are seeking to optimize their organization's telehealth services for high performance and long-term sustainability. The problem is that most leaders neither know how well (or how bad) their telehealth services are performing, nor what true success can or should look like. Telehealth, when designed and implemented correctly, will engage patients to achieve positive outcomes, delight physicians, and contribute to organizational strategic objectives, including sustainable financial success. In this presentation, Christian Milaster of Ingenium Digital Health Advisors leads viewers through a series of pragmatic concepts on how to set an organization’s telehealth success targets, what and how to measure telehealth performance, the Physician Bill of Telehealth Rights, and how to leverage telehealth to achieve strategic success. This presentation is the second session of a two-part series. The first session focused on a telehealth maturity model and is available here.

Addressing Intimate Partner Violence and Human Trafficking in the Health Center Setting

The coronavirus pandemic and consequent stay-at-home orders may increase danger for those at risk for or experiencing intimate partner violence and human trafficking (IPV/HT). Due to COVID-19, many health centers have shifted health encounters to virtual platforms, which offer unique opportunities to provide trauma-informed care and connect in new ways with those who may be experiencing abuse. Yet, telehealth and virtual visits also present health centers with new challenges related to privacy, safety and digital health equity. Given these changes in care delivery — and the inclusion of new Uniform Data System (UDS) data elements to capture IPV/HT diagnoses and services — health centers need information about how to identify and support patients at risk for or experiencing IPV/HT and leverage their health IT to provide and document care appropriately. In this webinar, presenters from the HITEQ Center and Futures Without Violence:

--Describe how health centers can implement an evidence-based, trauma-informed intervention for IPV/HT called CUES during virtual or in-person visits

--Review the newly included UDS data elements designed to capture IPV/HT diagnoses and services taking place within health centers

--Outline key considerations around privacy, safety, and equity for providing care through virtual platforms to patients at risk for or experiencing IPV/HT

--Feature promising strategies from health centers that have explored how to utilize health IT to support quality clinical care and data collection for IPV/HT

Ending the HIV Epidemic Collaborative: Next Gen