PROMOTING QUALITY AND SAFETY THROUGH STANDARDS 4
PromotingQuality and Safety through Standards
TheJoint Commission (TJC) and Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services(CMS) have formulated standards and values for improved patient careand healthcare quality through the development of core measures (TheJoint Commission, 2016). The two organizations have overtimeconsulted all stakeholders such as the health professionals, healthcare providers, and state hospital associations as well as healthcareconsumers and identified key areas of core measures (CMS, 2015).Stroke presents one area faced with core measures. The measuresfocused on stroke and were developed by TJC in collaboration withAmerican Heart Association (AHA), and Brain Attack Coalition (BAC) aswell as the American Stroke Association (ASA) (The Joint Commission,2016). The measures were intended to be used by certifiedDisease-Specific Care (DSC) centers. The measures provide that datacollection for all outlined stroke guidelines is required for PrimaryStroke Center Certification as well as for Comprehensive StrokeCenter Certification (The Joint Commission, 2016). Stroke accountsfor more than 795,000 cases annually in the US while 889,000 resultsin hospitalization. Hospitals have adopted the specified coremeasures to tackle the problem (Reeves et al., 2010).
Thegrowing focus on the importance of core measures and standards hasimproved the quality of care and patient safety, as well as clinicalcare outcomes. For instance, after adopting the Cholesterol-ReducingTreatment at Discharge measure for Ischemic stroke only, the NCBnoted that patients had a 2.2% reduction risk of fatal or non-fatalstroke (Tarver, 2014). In a different study, different clinicaltrials exhibited the benefit of warfarin as compared to placebo inpreventing thromboembolic procedures for nonvalvular atrialfibrillation patients. Patients administered with warfarin had anabsolute risk reduction from 10% to 4% (Tarver, 2014).
Therefore,core measures addressing enhanced and reliable health care standardsprove to be valuable tools. Measures focused on stroke need to bespecifically defined to evaluate the quality of care as it affectsthe care patients receive. The improved ability to track resultsshould drive evidence-based research that may realize enhancedmethodologies in improving patient outcomes.
References
Centersfor Medicare & Medicaid Services (2015). HealthOutcomes Survey (HOS) – Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services.Cms.gov.Retrieved 26 May 2016, fromhttps://www.cms.gov/Research-Statistics-Data-and-Systems/Research/HOS/index.html
Reeves,M., Parker, C., Fonarow, G., Smith, E., & Schwamm, L. (2010).Development of Stroke Performance Measures: Definitions, Methods, andCurrent Measures. Stroke,41(7).
Tarver,T. (2014). Heart Disease and Stroke Statistics–2014 Update: AReport from the American Heart Association. Journalof Consumer Health on the Internet,18(2),209-209.
TheJoint Commission (2016). Factsabout patient safety | Joint Commission.Jointcommission.org.Retrieved 26 May 2016, fromhttps://www.jointcommission.org/facts_about_patient_safety/