Emergency Department and Services

The Pediatric Symptom Checklist (PSC) is a brief parent-report questionnaire that is used to assess overall psychosocial functioning in children from 3 to 18 years of age. Originally developed to be a screen that would allow pediatricians and other health professionals to identify children with poor overall functioning who were in need of further evaluation or referral, the PSC has seen such wide use in large systems that it has increasingly been used as a quality indicator and as an outcome measure to assess changes in functioning over time.

Total Cost of Care reflects a mix of complicated factors such as patient illness burden, service utilization and negotiated prices. Total Cost Index (TCI) is a measure of a primary care provider’s risk adjusted cost effectiveness at managing the population they care for. TCI includes all costs associated with treating members including professional, facility inpatient and outpatient, pharmacy, lab, radiology, ancillary and behavioral health services.

The Resource Use Index (RUI) is a risk adjusted measure of the frequency and intensity of services utilized to manage a provider group’s patients. Resource use includes all resources associated with treating members including professional, facility inpatient and outpatient, pharmacy, lab, radiology, ancillary and behavioral health services.

A Resource Use Index when viewed together with the Total Cost of Care measure (NQF-endorsed #1604) provides a more complete picture of population based drivers of health care costs.

Percentage of discharges from an emergency department (ED) to ambulatory care or home health care, in which the patient, regardless of age, or their caregiver(s), received a transition record at the time of ED discharge including, at a minimum, all of the specified elements

The percentage of patients with a primary diagnosis of low back pain who did not have an imaging study (plain X-ray, MRI, CT scan) within 28 days of diagnosis.