Information for Consumers

What are the Hospital Process of Care Measures?

A process of care measure shows how often hospitals give recommended treatments known to get the best results for patients with certain medical conditions or surgical procedures. Information about these treatments are taken from the patients’ records and converted into a percentage. This is one way to compare the quality of care that hospitals give.

The hospital process of care measures include:

• Seven measures related to heart attack care
• Four measures related to heart failure care
• Seven measures related to pneumonia care
• Seven measures related to surgical care improvement project
• Three measures related to asthma care for children only

The measures are based on scientific evidence about treatments that are known to get the best results. Health care experts and researchers are constantly evaluating the evidence to make sure that guidelines and measures are kept up-to-date. Sometimes, guidelines and measures are revised to reflect new evidence. The HQA expects to increase the number of measures and the types of conditions and treatments that hospitals will report over time. To see technical information about how the measures on this website are defined, see Information for Professionals on Data Collection.