Pressure Injuries Expanded by CMS as Indicators of Hospital Harm

CMS has implemented a new quality measure for hospitals that expands the array of pressure injuries considered as adversely impacting quality care.  The new measure, developed in a program to provide electronic clinical quality measures (eCQMs), widens the scope of pressure injury stages that directly infer quality deficit.  The new measure however, bears no consideration for unavoidability of some pressure injuries even when recommended clinical practice guidelines for prevention have been followed.  According to CMS, the benefit of eCQMs is to assess the outcomes of treatment, reduce the burden of manual abstraction and reporting, and foster access to real-time data for quality improvement and clinical decision making.  The ultimate goal is to improve patient quality of life and lower Medicare costs.  The new eCQM is entitled Hospital Harm – Pressure Injury, and is defined as follows: “This measure assesses the proportion of inpatient encounters of patients 18 years of age or older at admission, who suffer the harm of developing a new stage 2, stage 3, stage 4 pressure injury, deep tissue pressure injury, or unstageable pressure injury. The measure defines a new pressure injury as not present on arrival to the hospital or not documented within the first 24 hours after hospital arrival. Only one harm (new qualifying pressure injury) is counted per encounter.” This new eCQM was developed by the Center for Outcomes Research and Evaluation (CORE) which is par...
Source: Jeffrey M. Levine MD | Geriatric Specialist | Wound Care | Pressure Ulcers - Category: Geriatrics Authors: Tags: Featured Medical Articles Geriatric Medicine Pressure Injuries & Wound Care Risk Management bedsores decubiti decubitus ulcer end-of-life care geriatrics Healthcare Quality hospital quality Improving Medical Care Jeff Levine MD J Source Type: blogs