[Nurse74]

Hi everyone:
I need some help! I've just gotten promoted to Quality Improvement Coordinator . The position that I'm now taking has been vacant for over a year. I just need to know from those of you with lots of experience if all I'll be doing is input on the computer for core measures and charts and graphs...What is your daily schedule like? Any help and or advise would be greatly appreciated. Nurse74

[renerian]

Congrats to you as one OBQI nerd! LOL. What venue are you working is so I can help you?

renerian

[Nurse74]

renerian:
Hi, from the Chicago area! Thanks for responding to my note! I'm not sure exactly what you mean by venue. I do know that I'm going to be directly involved with the "stats" from the Core Measures as well as preparing reports. I also will be involved in trying to get the medical staff more involved with Quality initiatives. I report directly to the Director of QI.
We are using CompData for our reporting mechanism.
I'm being led to believe that this will be my most important function. The hospital that I work at is one of 8 other hospitals in our health system and I have spoken with several of our other QI coordinators and they have given me the impression that doing the "stats" for the Core Measures as well as all the various other reports that are offshoots of the Core Measures will take up most if not all of my time..
What's the reality of this positon and do you find that most of your time is taken up with the Core Measures reporting??
Thanks for any help!
Nurse74

[renerian]

I work in the home health area and now I got it that you work in the hospital arena.

We are in need of updating our PI plan. Outdated and more like QI/PI and not outcome based at all. We study traditional audit stuff, OASIS items and such but not much else. My goal for 2004 is to work on some type of outcome project for the agency.

What are your core measures?

renerian

[Nurse74]

renerian:
Hi again, Yup, I'm working in a hospital enviornment. I have about 10 years of experience in Quality as well as finally getting my ABQAURP Board, which then enabled me to do case management which I did for about 5 years and now I've just gotten my Master's degree in Health Services Administration and have finally been promoted. The Core Measures that we assess are AMI, Heart Failure, Pneumonia and we had been doing Stroke under the Project in a Box format but then we went with the Core Measures program and now only do AMI, Heart Failure and Pneumonia.
In this new position, I'm thinking that I will also be having to do some major teaching to the Docs on Staff because they do not seem to be understanding the concepts of the Core Measures. These core measures statistics are what the CMS will be releasing when it comes time for hospital disclosure of information. Those core measures stats will be summarized and put on each individual hospital web site for prospective patients and their families to assess. Scary isn't it? So, we need to help consistantly be improving those scores. No one is ever perfect but at least we have to do our very best to show how well we do.

[renerian]

CMS has listed the home health compare information this month on their website. The issue I have is it does not like payor mix, chronic vs acute clients which affects your outcomes. Our agency is 50% psyc clients under that benefit and they are never going to get better. It does not list alot of things so if a consumer looks at it they do not get an accurate snapshot.

I agree much education needs done on this type of information with staff and docs. I am just starting to educate our staff and we did better than alot of the agencies but we hope to improve on it.

I just got my Masters in March and am going to enroll in the PhD program next year. I just needed a break LOL. I got my MS /distance in one year. Same for my BS so I worked hard LOL.

Home health is so hard pressed to find money to go to any of the seminars or things that would help improve our program. Do you have funds to go to presentations to keep you up to date? Everything in health care changes so fast.

I do coding to as part of my job. Coding just changed.

renerian