Patient-Reported Information Has Important Impact on Key Quality Measures

Sub-par interoperability in electronic health records (EHRs) and health IT connectivity often prevent healthcare providers from getting a full picture of a patient’s health, according to researchers from Anthem, Kaiser Permanente, and Health Loop, in a study recently published in the Journal of Medical Internet Research. The demand for data around healthcare utilization and post-discharge complications is growing as quality reporting and quality-based reimbursement becomes more important. But as these three payers found, accurate and timely measurement and reporting of these outcomes vary, in part due to limitations of the sources from which such data are derived, large variations in the ways in which they are measured, and the lag time between the capture of these events in reporting systems, the authors wrote.

To get a clearer idea of whether patients in real-world care settings are accurate self-reporters, they surveyed patients 90 days post-discharge after hip arthroplasty, knee arthroplasty, knee arthroscopic procedures, shoulder arthroscopic procedures, and knee arthrotomy using a checklist of possible negative outcomes and complications, and compared it to claims data.

According to the researchers, stability of patient recall appears to remain over 2 to 3 months but suffers from marked decline between three and eight months.

“These findings may bear relevance to the very health care entities that are increasingly bearing risk under programs such as the Hospital Readmissions Reduction Program and bundled payment programs including the Comprehensive Care for Joint Replacement program, the Bundled Payments for Care Improvement initiative and its recent successor, Bundled Payments for Care Improvement Advanced,” the study concluded.

Click here to read the full study.

[author] [author_image timthumb='on']/Portals/0/uploads/content_hub/Mary-Butler-Portrait.jpg[/author_image] [author_info]Mary Butler is the associate editor at Journal of AHIMA.[/author_info] [/author]