July / August 2008
NEW PRODUCTS & SERVICES
TRENDS
Ingenious Med's IM Quality Measures™ Tracks Hospitalist Performance
Ingenious Med's IM Quality Measures™ is a software package that enables physicians and practice administrators to document, capture, report, and submit quality performance metrics. Physicians and practices that track quality performance can enhance revenues, improve clinical care, and prove practice value to employing hospitals, payers, and patients. IM Quality Measures™ also helps physicians participate in "pay-for-reporting" and "pay-for-performance" initiatives such as the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Service's (CMS) Physician Quality Reporting Initiative (PQRI).
The value of data-to-information-to-insight transformation was demonstrated recently when IM Quality Measures™ data helped convinced CMS to preserve several PQRI measures critical to establishing hospitalists as a recognized specialty and positioning them to receive PQRI "pay-for-reporting" bonuses.
CMS does not yet recognize hospital medicine as a specialty, however, the Society of Hospital Medicine (SHM) wanted hospitalists to have the opportunity to participate in the PQRI. SHM successfully lobbied CMS to get several 2007 performance measure specifications changed so that hospitalists could report on them, said Patrick J. Torcson, MD, MMM, FACP, chairman of the SHM Performance and Standards Committee.
"PQRI performance measures originally were not created with hospitalists in mind, so SHM has been very proactive in trying to include measures relevant to hospital medicine," said Torcson, the director of Hospital Medicine at St. Tammany Parish Hospital in Covington, LA.
But when CMS began updating the performance measurement specifications for 2008, several specialty societies requested that specifications for three cardiac measures be revised to cover outpatient but not inpatient reporting.
The three measurements were:
- Prescribing Angiotensin-Converting Enzyme (ACE) Inhibitor or Angiotensin Receptor Blocker (ARB) Therapy for adult patients with a diagnosis of heart failure and left ventricular systolic dysfunction (LVSD);
- Prescribing oral antiplatelet therapy for adult patients with a diagnosis of coronary artery disease; and,
- Prescribing beta-blocker therapy adult patients with a diagnosis of coronary artery disease and prior myocardial infarction (MI).
"That's where Ingenious Med and IM Quality Measures™ came in," said Torcson. "There were other PQRI performance measures related to stroke and advanced care plans available for hospitalists, but the cardiac measures were the most commonly reported and also harmonized with the Joint Commission Core Measures already reported by hospitals. SHM was given an opportunity to present a position paper to CMS and make a case for keeping the three cardiac inpatient measures. Using data from IM Quality Measures™ provided by Ingenious Med, SHM was able to show that these were not only pertinent measures, but also were the most common measures reported by hospitalists and that these inpatient measures harmonized very nicely with hospital-level performance measures."
CMS decided not to change the specifications. This decision was very favorable for hospital medicine, Torcson said.
"Hospital medicine as a distinct specialty really rose out of the drive for efficiency, particularly on the inpatient side," he explained. "Hospitalists operate in an environment that is focused on performance measurement and improvement. It is the basis of what hospitalists do. Now that we're at the beginning of the era of pay-for-performance, we wanted hospitalists to develop their performance reporting skills, and the cardiac measures are very important to that agenda. It's also important that hospitalists have the opportunity to get the same 1.5% PQRI reporting bonus as other specialties. It was nice to be able to call on Ingenious Med and get the data to make our case."
Source: Ingenious Med
FDA Approves IntelliDOT® Blood Product Administration™
IntelliDOT Corporation, a leading provider of wireless, handheld, barcode point-of-care (BPOC) solutions to hospitals, has announced that the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has granted 510(k) clearance for IntelliDOT Blood Product Administration (IntelliDOT BPA™) for commercial sale.
This new solution is a point-of-care Transfusion Safety Management System composed of computers, a software application, wireless handheld barcode scanners and wireless printers. IntelliDOT BPA assists nurses, phlebotomists and laboratory personnel in assuring blood samples are drawn from the correct patients, assists laboratory personnel in accurate matching of blood samples with correct blood or blood products, and assists nursing personnel in administering blood or blood products to the correct patient. It also enables the immediate documentation of any adverse reaction data when needed.
IntelliDOT BPA helps hospitals meet JCAHO standards for patient identification, and assists in ensuring accurate management, administration and documentation of blood/blood product administration.
"IntelliDOT BPA assists nurses and phlebotomists in providing step-by-step accuracy and crystal-clear communication among all clinicians involved in the complex blood product administration process," said David Swenson R. Ph, co-founder and chief clinical officer of IntelliDOT. "We are excited to expand the benefits of the IntelliDOT CAREt® System by adding this end- to-end blood administration safety and workflow system that will assist hospitals in preventing life-threatening blood transfusion errors — from the blood bank to the bedside."
Source: IntelliDOT Corporation
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