Populations at Risk

The number of hospital discharges with a retained surgical item or unretrieved device fragment (secondary diagnosis) among surgical and medical patients ages 18 years and older or obstetric patients. Excludes cases with principal diagnosis of retained surgical item or unretrieved device fragment and cases with a secondary diagnosis of retained surgical item or unretrieved device fragment present on admission.

Patients age 50 or over with a fragility fracture who have either a dual-energy X-Ray absorptiometry (DXA) scan ordered or performed, or a prescription for FDA-approved pharmacotherapy for osteoporosis, or who are seen by or linked to a fracture liaison service prior to discharge from inpatient status,. If DXA is not available and documented as such, then any other specified fracture risk assessment method may be ordered or performed.

This measure assesses the extent to which health care providers actually involve patients in a decision-making process when there is more than one reasonable option. This proposal is to focus on patients who have undergone any one of 7 common, important surgical procedures: total replacement of the knee or hip, lower back surgery for spinal stenosis of herniated disc, radical prostatectomy for prostate cancer, mastectomy for early stage breast cancer or percutaneous coronary intervention (PCI) for stable angina.

NSC-12.1 - Percentage of total productive nursing hours worked by RN (employee and contract) with direct patient care responsibilities by hospital unit.

NSC-12.2 - Percentage of total productive nursing hours worked by LPN/LVN (employee and contract) with direct patient care responsibilities by hospital unit.

NSC-12.3 - Percentage of total productive nursing hours worked by UAP (employee and contract) with direct patient care responsibilities by hospital unit.

The standardized hospitalization ratio is defined to be the ratio of the number of hospital admissions that occur for Medicare ESRD dialysis patients treated at a particular facility to the number of hospitalizations that would be expected given the characteristics of the dialysis facility’s patients and the national norm for dialysis facilities. This measure is calculated as a ratio but can also be expressed as a rate.

Standardized mortality ratio is defined to be the ratio of the number of deaths that occur for Medicare ESRD dialysis patients treated at a particular facility to the number of deaths that would be expected given the characteristics of the dialysis facility’s patients and the national norm for dialysis facilities. This measure is calculated as a ratio but can also be expressed as a rate.

The Standardized Readmission Ratio (SRR) for a dialysis facility is the ratio of the number of observed index discharges from acute care hospitals to that facility that resulted in an unplanned readmission to an acute care hospital within 4-30 days of discharge to the expected number of readmissions given the discharging hospitals and the characteristics of the patients and based on a national norm. Note that the measure is based on Medicare-covered dialysis patients.

The risk adjusted facility level transfusion ratio “STrR” is specified for all adult dialysis patients. It is a ratio of the number of eligible red blood cell transfusion events observed in patients dialyzing at a facility, to the number of eligible transfusion events that would be expected under a national norm, after accounting for the patient characteristics within each facility. Eligible transfusions are those that do not have any claims pertaining to the comorbidities identified for exclusion, in the one year look back period prior to each observation window.

The percentage of patients ages 40 to 75 years who were dispensed a medication for diabetes that receive a statin medication.

This facility-level measure estimates an all-cause, unplanned, 30-day, risk-standardized readmission rate for adult Medicare fee-for-service (FFS) patients with a principal discharge diagnosis of a psychiatric disorder or dementia/Alzheimer’s disease.

The performance period for the measure is 24 months.