Massachusetts Health Organizations Report Quality Performance Measures
BOSTON — The Mass.Hospital Assoc. (MHA), the Organization of Nurse Leaders of MA, RI and NH, and the Home Care Alliance of Massachusetts have publicly posted the latest-available key national care-quality performance measures for both hospitals and home-healthcare agencies in Massachusetts.
Data from Medicare’s Hospital Compare and Home Health Compare are now available on the PatientCareLink website (www.patientcarelink.org) for 65 hospitals and more than 95 home-health agencies in the Bay State.
Reported measures for hospitals include best practices for heart attack or chest pain, heart failure, pneumonia care, influenza prevention, surgical-care improvement, stroke care, and blood-clot prevention and treatment. For home-care agencies, the reported measures include timely initiation of care, patient/family medication education, depression assessment, and more.
To view the updated reports, visit and click on the ‘Healthcare Provider Data’ tab and then either the ‘Hospital Data’ or ‘Home Health Agency Data’ link, then ‘Individual Hospital Performance Measures’ or ‘Select an Agency.’
The home-health-agency reports now incorporate data for the period Jan. 1, 2014 to Dec. 31, 2014 for all measures, and the hospital reports cover July 2013 to June 2014. In addition to each facility’s individual performance, the pages also provide a comparison to state and U.S. peer-facility averages.
“Providing high-quality, safe patient care is a top priority for Massachusetts hospitals,” said Pat Noga, vice president of Clinical Affairs for MHA. “Our hospitals are also committed to publicly posting important quality and staffing information to provide patients and caregivers alike additional confidence in their care.”
Patricia Kelleher, executive director of the Home Care Alliance of Massachusetts, added that the partnership between hospitals and home-health agencies on PatientCareLink furthers positive working relationships along the entire continuum of care, which can only improve patient safety and quality overall.
“All of the home-care agencies listed on the PatientCare Link website are Medicare-certified, which means they are approved by Medicare and meet certain federal health and safety requirements, but giving patients, their families, and other caregivers easy access to home-health-agency quality data through the website assists everyone who is concerned with safe, high-quality care in the home setting,” Kelleher said.