Ongoing concern about the quality of care provided to residents of chronic and post-acute care nursing facilities demands effective methods for measuring and reporting the quality of care, both across institutions and over time. The Institute of Medicine’s 2001 report, Improving the Quality of Long-term Care, concluded that there is a "lack of standard measurement tools and data to use in more systematic assessments of the quality of care in various long-term care settings." Currently, patients, families, and purchasers who wish to assess the quality of care of nursing facilities must generally resort to features such as the subjective appeal of a facility, characteristics of residents and staff, or limited information based on periodic inspection surveys. Recent research has focused on more specific measures of quality based on facility performance in the processes and outcomes of care, but such measures are not widely used. A core set of performance measures for chronic and post-acute care nursing facilities would provide tools for regulators, purchasers, and consumers to evaluate the quality of care in these facilities, as well as providing the metrics by which facilities could assess and improve the quality of care they provide.
This project will:
While the project will emphasize nursing care in acute care hospitals, the framework for general measurement will recognize the need for measures to be compatible across settings of care.
Funding for this project has been provided by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services.
For more information, contact Reva Winkler, MD, MPH, at 202.783.1300.