Hospitals participating in the HQA initiative provide
their data to the QIO Clinical Data Warehouse. The Quality Improvement
Organizations' (QIO) Clinical Data Warehouse stores provider-reported
performance measure data for quality improvement and public reporting. It is the
intent of CMS that the QIO Clinical Data Warehouse will ultimately provide four
(4) quarters of data, updated quarterly, for each participating hospital.
The CMS Abstraction and Reporting Tool (CART) is a medical
record data abstraction tool that builds on over 10 years of measurement
activity. It currently generates both CMS/The Joint Commission aligned measures
as well as the ten core CMS/The Joint Commission aligned measures, with full
alignment slated for future development. Hospitals may use the CART to transmit
abstracted data directly into the QIO Clinical Data Warehouse through
www.QualityNet.org
(a
HIPAA-compliant, secure data transmission vehicle) or they may instruct a vendor
to submit the data on their behalf using QNET. CART may also be used to transmit
data directly to an ORYX vendor from a current Joint Commission-accredited
hospital. The vendors transmit the data to the QIO Clinical Warehouse, if the
hospital has authorized them to do so, on their behalf. Under The Joint
Commission program, organizations that wish to be certified as ORYX vendors must
pass certain tests that verify their capacity to correctly handle hospital data
and calculate performance rates using the prescribed algorithms.
Both ORYX Vendors and CART data submissions include
auditing procedures and edit checks, which assess whether data submitted is
consistent with defined parameters for sample size, outliers, and missing data.
In addition, CMS intends to validate data submitted to the Warehouse for the HQA
initiative. The validation process will provide assurance that the hospital, or
its designated agent, can accurately abstract patient medical records and
accurately submit data to the QIO Clinical Data Warehouse. The data for this
posting has been audited/edited, but not validated.
Because the children’s asthma care measures are collected
by The Joint Commission and are shared with CMS, questions about children’s
asthma care data quality assurance should be directed to
The Joint Commission- Opens in a new window