She is not an abstractor. The data is required for medcaid/medicare reimbursement. Every quarter 5 charts are checked for validation to make sure they are abstracted correctly. Average must be greater than 80 percent a year or it affects the reimbursement. It is required by all acute care hospitals but not critical access hospitals yet. The data is compared nationally and many core measure questions are publicly reported on hospital compare website.
CMS gives you a list and you choose which database you want to collect. They might give a list of 10-15 and you need to collect for 1 or 2 of them.
For example surgery. They collect for antibiotic to be given within an hour of incision. For this you need to have all elements of correct ABX for surgery, date, route, and military time. If any of these are not complete you fail the measure. Getting anesthsia to document IV has been difficult.
This is an example of 1 of the measures. They are many. It is very surprising how the insurance companies and CMS dictate everything you do.
Then quarterly we present the data amd explain why they fail. It is actually a very intersting job. The definitions change or add every 6 months. 1 data base of definitions to abstract is over 300 pages not counting all the appendix's. Sorry if I explained too much.
This is why it would be so difficult to train a lay person. They would not realize the impact and accuracy the core measure elements are. Thanks for listening
