Patient Safety

Accidental punctures or lacerations (secondary diagnosis) during procedure per 1,000 discharges for patients ages 17 years and younger. Includes metrics for discharges grouped by risk category. Excludes obstetric discharges, spinal surgery discharges, discharges with accidental puncture or laceration as a principal diagnosis, discharges with accidental puncture or laceration as a secondary diagnosis that is present on admission, normal newborns, and neonates with birth weight less than 500 grams.

The measure addresses adherence to three types of chronic medications: statins, levothyroxine, and angiotensin converting enzyme inhibitors (ACEIs)/angiotensin receptor blockers (ARBs). The measure is divided into three submeasures:

Measure A: The percentage of eligible individuals who had at least two prescriptions for statins and who have a Proportion of Days Covered (PDC) of at least 0.8 during the measurement period (12 consecutive months).

This measure assesses the percentage of patients 18 years of age and older who received a least 180 treatment days of ambulatory medication therapy for a select therapeutic agent during the measurement year and at least one therapeutic monitoring event for the therapeutic agent in the measurement year. Report the following three rates and a total rate:

The measure estimates a hospital-level 30-day hospital-wide risk-standardized mortality rate (RSMR), defined as death from any cause within 30 days after the index admission date, for Medicare fee-for-service (FFS) patients who are between the ages of 65 and 94.

Measure title continued: Composite weighted average for 3 CT Exam Types: Overall Percent of CT exams for which Dose Length Product is at or below the size-specific diagnostic reference level (for CT Abdomen-pelvis with contrast/single phase scan, CT Chest without contrast/single phase scan and CT Head/Brain without contrast/single phase scan)

In-hospital deaths per 1,000 discharges for low mortality (< 0.5%) Diagnosis Related Groups (DRGs) among patients ages 18 years and older or obstetric patients. Excludes cases with trauma, cases with cancer, cases with an immunocompromised state, and transfers to an acute care facility.

[NOTE: The software provides the rate per hospital discharge. However, common practice reports the measure as per 1,000 discharges. The user must multiply the rate obtained from the software by 1,000 to report in-hospital deaths per 1,000 hospital discharges.]

For both the 2018 claims and registry specifications AND the 2019 performance period eMeasure (v8) the measure description is as follows: