The toolkit is a general guide to using improvement methods with a particular focus on the quality indicators. It focuses on 17 patient safety indicators and 28 inpatient quality indicators.
The patient safety indicators help providers screen for adverse events patients experience as a result of exposure to the healthcare system. Patient safety indicators are defined on two levels: provider-level indicators and area-level indicators.
The inpatient quality indicators can be used with hospital inpatient discharge data to provide a perspective on quality. They are grouped into the following four sets: volume indicators, mortality indicators for inpatient procedures, mortality indicators for inpatient conditions and utilization indicators.
The AHRQ toolkit also includes steps for quality improvement, including determining readiness to change, applying quality indicators to hospital data and identifying priorities for quality improvement.
For a full list of the quality indicators and detailed steps for quality improvement, as suggested by AHRQ, click here.
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