Department-Wide Quality Metrics
The University of Chicago tracks a number of quality metrics, both internal and external, with the input of its faculty, staff, and adminstrators.
Sources for potential quality metrics include the National Quality Forum (NQF), the Joint Commission (ORYX, etc), the AMA, and the Ambulatory Quality Care Alliance. Subspecialty societies are increasing active in creating clinically relevant quality metrics for individual specialities, and many of these are discussed in the 'Section-Specific' resources tab, on this website. Characteristics of good ambulatory physician-specific quality measures have recently been suggested by the AQA.
Publically reported measures have been begun by the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) in their Hospital Compare Program, Inpatient Prospective Payment System (IPPS), and the more recently announced Outpatient Prospective Payment System (OPPS), also known as the Hospital Outpatient Quality Data Reporting Program. The evidence base for the positive effects of such reporting remains in its early stages, but suggests that it does foster hospital quality improvement activities.
Systematic Review: Public Reporting and Quality of Care Fung Annals IM 1_08
CMS/Joint Commission National Hospital Quality Measures (Inpt) Specifications 4/08-9/08
Another approach to to an overall insitutional assessment has been taken by U.S. News and World Report, which ranked the University of Chicago in its 'honor roll', with 5 sections within Department of Medicine receiving national recognition. Other external rankings are discussed in a separate tab 'External Ratings'.
Another is the University HealthSystem Consortium (UHC) was formed in 1984, and is an alliance of nearly 100 academic medical centers in the U.S. and over 150 of their afiliated hospitals. This alliance represents over 90% of the nation's non-academic medical centers and is an important source of benchmarking data for the University of Chicago Medical Center. It uses a sophisticated risk adjustment model (3M APR-DRG grouper) to compare the outcomes of patients admitted to hospitals across the alliance. UHC then calculates 'observed to expected' mortality by product lines. Because patients often shift between different teams while in the hospital, the outcomes reported reflect overall care in the department and hospital, and are thus not considered 'section-specific'.
General Medicine
3rd Quarter 2007
Cardiology
3rd Quarter 2007
Gastroenterology
3rd Quarter 2007
Medical Oncology
3rd Quarter 2007