A new study, published in the Annals of Emergency Medicine, sought to examine how well process quality measures that focus on Emergency Department care correlate with subsequent patient outcomes. Researchers used process measures that were publicly reported to the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services Hospital Compare program and sought to determine how performance on those measures correlated with mortality rates. They examined the following measures relevant to ED care in 2013-2015 for patients with acute myocardial infarction (AMI): percentage of patients receiving aspirin (ASA) at arrival, percentage of patients receiving primary percutaneous coronary intervention (PCI) within 90 minutes of hospital arrival, median time to ECG for patients with chest pain and median time to transfer to another hospital with for PCI. The study found no evidence that hospitals performing better on most publicly reported ED process measures had better outcomes for patients with AMI.
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- 13EMF Is Hospital Performance on Publicly Reported Quality Measures Associated With Patient Outcomes? Annals of Emergency Medicine. October 2018