Will ORYX cause data collections to merge?
Will ORYX cause data collections to merge?
Don’t look for collaboration soon
Perhaps your hospital system has had some experience in collecting data for other systems, such as the patient-centered measurement sets offered by the Foundation for Accountability (FACCT) in Portland, OR, or the Health Plan Employer Data and Information Set (HEDIS) created by the National Committee for Quality Assurance (NCQA) in Washington, DC.
The experience may help, although these systems are unlikely to overlap with ORYX, an initiative of the Joint Commission on Accreditation of Healthcare Organizations in Oakbrook Terrace, IL.
NCQA’s HEDIS traditionally has been geared toward information desired by managed care companies, and FACCT’s focus is on how patients perceive the quality of their health care. Both have different objectives than ORYX, which is intended to help health care organizations identify problems, verify the effectiveness of their quality improvement process, and benchmark their performance with their peers.
The Joint Commission and others say that ORYX is not set up for benchmarking now except in its advanced stage, called ORYX Plus. ORYX Plus will have specific definitions and values for data collection of 32 measures that could be used by hospitals that want to benchmark their outcomes. More than a dozen vendors have agreed to use the ORYX Plus measures and definitions, says Deborah Nadzam, PhD, RN, vice president for performance measurement at the Joint Commission.
"That is the only instance right now where we will be able to cross-compare, and it is our model for the future," Nadzam says. While the Joint Commission has no plans for integrating ORYX with other systems, other organizations are making the first tiny moves toward integrating their systems.
For example, FACCT has been collaborating with NCQA and sharing information for some measurements related to diabetes and pediatrics, says Doug Davidson, director of communications for the nonprofit coalition. FACCT was formed in 1995 to create measures of health care quality that reflected consumers’ needs. "It would be good to have some consensus around measures of quality," Davidson says.
The NCQA, with its HEDIS 3.0, has made a shift toward looking at outcomes and measurements that describe how well patients are able to function in their daily lives. This is a major change from its process-oriented focus with previous versions of HEDIS.
So far, FACCT has not been in contact with the Joint Commission about a similar collaboration, Davidson says. "I think what would be nice is if we could get to a shared vision of what we’re measuring, and if we can get to that, it would be easier to come up with an overall more consistent approach."
Another obstacle to collecting data consistently for these various groups is the tremendous amount of choices for vendors and measures that may be used to meet the Joint Commission’s requirements for ORYX. The Joint Commission has approved more than 200 performance measurement system vendors, and each of these has up to 100 measures that have been approved for use, Nadzam says.
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