Joint Commission Releases Quality Dashboard Reports for ASCs

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The Joint Commission has launched a new dashboard report for accredited ambulatory surgery centers (ASC) to provide performance measurement data on selected measures, according to the October issue of Perspectives.

Available to Joint Commission surveyors and accredited ASCs, the reports are designed to help spur conversations about data, performance measures, and quality improvement in the survey process. Starting early next year, the accreditor plans to release similar reports for hospital specialties such as rehabilitation and inpatient psychiatric. It has previously released reports for accredited nursing care centers and home health and hospice organizations.

The report uses recent external data from the CMS’ ASC Quality Reporting website. The following measures are included in the dashboard:

  • Patient burn (ASC-1)
  • Patient fall (ASC-2)
  • Wrong site, side, patient, procedure, implant (ASC-3)
  • Hospital transfer/admission (ASC-4)
  • Percentage of patients receiving appropriate recommendation for follow-up screening colonoscopy (ASC-9)
  • Percentage of patients with history of polyps receiving follow-up colonoscopy in the appropriate time frame (ASC-10)
  • Percentage of patients who had cataract surgery and had improvement in visual function within 90 days following the surgery (ASC-11)
  • Rate of unplanned hospital visits after an outpatient colonoscopy (ASC-12)
  • Percentage of surgical patients under general/neuraxial anesthesia of 60 minutes or more who are normothermic within 15 minutes of arrival in a postanesthesia care unit (ASC-13)
  • Percentage of cataract surgery patients who have unplanned anterior vitrectomy (ASC-14)

The reports are posted in the Continuous Compliance section of an accredited ASCs Joint Commission Connect extranet and detail how each organization performed on selected measures. The dashboard looks at each measure and compares the organization’s performance to national, state, and Joint Commission-accredited organization averages. The dashboard report is not a scorable element on accreditation surveys, but it’s considered a tool to spark discussion about quality improvement, the accreditor says.