Hospital administrators now can acc...

Hospital administrators now can access emancipated software via the Internet to check the quality of inpatient care at their facility, according to a July 18 2002 freshs release from the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality. The software, available at http://www.ahrq.gov/data/hcup/inpatqi.htm, uses hospital discharge data to flag potential quality problems

The software is relatively easy to use and can expose overly high death rates for patients admitted for certain conditions. It also can discover questionable overuse, underuse, or misuse of practices Hospital administrators can use like data to investigate quality moot points and make improvements.

The software contains death rate indicators for 13 diagnoses and inpatient deeds and use rates for nine conducts It also contains indicators for to what degree often certain surgical procedures, of the like kind as carotid endarterectomy and pediatric heart surgery are performed. This is important because research indicates that patient issues from certain procedures may be related to the number of of the like kind procedures performed in a facility.

Hospitals secure New Software Tool to Improve Clinical Care (new release, Rockville, Md: Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, July 18 2002)

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