NQF Approves Nursing Sensitive
Measures and Nursing Home Measures
February 6, 2004 - The Board of Directors of the National
Quality Forum met Jan. 29 to approve a set of nursing care
measures and two additional nursing home measures. In addition,
the Board was briefed on the status of two of the Forum's
membership advisory committees.
The voting results on the 19 measures approved by the nursing
care subcommittee were presented to the Board. After some
discussion, Board members agreed to have four measures go
back to Forum staff for further review: the prevalence of
hospital acquired pneumonia, restraint prevalence, prevalence
of urinary tract infection, and the nurse's educational background.
The remaining fifteen measures were approved. The list of
approved measures included, among others:
- Death among surgical inpatients with treatable serious
complications (failure to rescue);
- Pressure ulcer prevalence;
- Restraint prevalence (vest and limb only);
- Skill mix of nurses at a facility (RN, LVN/LPN, UAP,
and contract); and
- Nursing care hours per patient day (RN, LPN, and UAP).
The Board endorsed a set of nursing home quality measures
in 2003; however, two measures, patient weight loss and nurse
staffing, were sent back for further study. Forum staff further
reviewed these measures and the Board reconsidered them at
this meeting. The nurse staffing measure was approved, and
after agreeing on an exclusion for hospice patients, the Board
approved the weight loss measure. These measures will be incorporated
into the nursing home measures set that was endorsed by the
Forum in 2003.
The Board was also updated on the Forum's Advisory Committee
on Implementation Strategy and Priorities and the Advisory
Committee on Data Integrity and Availability. The Implementation
Committee met twice and developed a document containing implementation
priorities. The document was sent to members for review and
comment. The Forum staff is compiling the comments, which
will be presented at the next Board meeting. The Board also
approved the Data Committee's idea to evaluate the clinical
aspects of measures and to write a report on how to develop
better measures with a goal of completing the report by July.
Information:
Jennifer Faerberg, DHCA-Project Director
AAMC Office of Governmental Relations
jfishburn@aamc.org
(202) 828-6221
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