Assignment: Committee for Quality Assurance
Assignment: Committee for Quality Assurance
Question Description
I’m working on a Health & Medical question and need guidance to help me study.
After reading Chapter 1 through 4, you should be familiar with quality improvement initiatives including the National Committee for Quality Assurance (NCQA) HEDIS & Quality Measurement: HEDIS Measures. (Links to an external site.) Health plans and physicians must ensure they are meeting standards set by the accreditation agencies, such as NCQA. As a physician practice manager for Dr. Jones, you have just conducted a mock survey of the patient chart data. The data shows that your physician practice is not meeting standards for two HEDIS measures.
Choose two HEDIS measures from the list below that must be implemented in a physician practice to improve patient outcomes.
You must describe the sources of data needed to conduct the two measures. What source would you use obtain the data? For example, if we were to look at patients receiving a beta blocker after discharge from the hospital, we would obtain data from pharmacy claims.
Using one of the quality improvement models (i.e., Lean, PDSA, or Six Sigma), explain how you would use the model to implement one of the chosen HEDIS measures.
Include information on how the quality initiatives chosen are linked to the rising costs of health care. Consider government mandates that have improved quality initiatives related to implementing the HEDIS measures or added to the burden of increased costs.
Your initial post should be 250 to 300 words and utilize at least one scholarly source from the Ashford University Library to justify your choice of improvement models. Cite all sources in APA format as outlined in the Ashford Writing Center’s Introduction to APA (Links to an external site.).
NCQA HEDIS Measures
Anti-Depressant Medication Management (AMM)
Assesses adults 18 years of age and older with a diagnosis of major depression who were newly treated with antidepressant medication and remained on their antidepressant medications.
Two rates are reported:
Effective Acute Phase Treatment: Adults who remained on an antidepressant medication for at least 84 days (12 weeks).
Effective Continuation Phase Treatment: Adults who remained on an antidepressant medication for at least 180 days (6 months).
Cervical Cancer Screening:
Assesses women 21–64 years of age who were screened for cervical cancer using either of the following criteria:
Women age 21–64 who had cervical cytology performed every 3 years.
Women age 30–64 who had cervical cytology/human papillomavirus (HPV) co-testing performed every 5 years.
Colorectal Screening:
Assesses adults 50–75 who had appropriate screening for colorectal cancer with any of the following tests: annual fecal occult blood test, flexible sigmoidoscopy every 5 years, colonoscopy every 10 years, computed tomography colonography every 5 years, stool DNA test every 3 years.
Hypertension/Cardiovascular:
Assesses patients who were hospitalized and discharged alive after an acute Myocardial Infarction (heart attack) who received treatment with beta-blockers for six months after discharge.
Assesses patients 18 to 85 with a diagnosis of hypertension whose most recent blood pressure reading was controlled.
Age 18 to 59 whose BP was <140/90
Age 60 to 85 with a diagnosis of diabetes whose BP was <140/90
Age 60 to 85 without a diagnosis of diabetes whose BP was <150/90
Immunization Status:
Adolescents: Assesses adolescents 13 years of age who had one dose of meningococcal vaccine, one Tdap vaccine and the complete human papillomavirus vaccine series by their 13th birthday.
Children: Assessed the percentage of children 2 years of age who had a four diphtheria, tetanus and acellular pertussis (DTaP); three polio (IPV); one measles, mumps and rubella (MMR); three haemophilus influenza type B (HiB); three hepatitis B (HepB), one chicken pox (VZV); four pneumococcal conjugate (PCV); one hepatitis A (HepA); two or three rotavirus (RV); and two influenza (flu) vaccines by their second birthday.
Mammograms:
Women age 50 to 74 years who have had a mammogram during the preceding 24 months. Exclusion of those women who have undergone bilateral mastectomy.
Non- Recommended PSA:
Assess whether men 70 years of age and older were screened unnecessarily for prostate cancer using prostate-specific antigen (PSA)-based screening.
Osteoporosis Testing and Management in Older Women:
Osteoporosis Testing in Older Women: This survey-based measure assesses women 65–85 years of age who report ever having received a bone density test to check for osteoporosis.
Osteoporosis Management in Women Who Had a Fracture: Assesses women 65–85 years of age who suffered a fracture and who had either a bone mineral density test or a prescription for a drug to treat osteoporosis in the six months after the fracture.
Persistence of Beta Blocker treatment after a Heart Attack (BPH):
Assesses adults 18 years of age and older during the measurement year who were hospitalized and discharged alive with a diagnosis of acute myocardial infarction and who received persistent beta-blocker treatment for six months after discharge.
Smoking Cessation:
Assesses current smokers seen by a physician during the year who were advised to quit, and cessation medications were recommended and discussed. Different cessation methods were discussed.
Weight Assessment:
Assessed patients between the ages of 3 to 17 who had been examined for body mass index (BMI, received counseling on nutrition). Counseling or referral for physical activity or indication physical activity was addressed during an outpatient visit either by a claim or as a medical record entry during the measurement year.
Assesses the percentage of members 18–74 years of age who had an outpatient visit and whose body mass index (BMI) was documented during the measurement year or the year prior to the measurement year.
Guided Response: Choose two classmates’ posts, and respond to the questions listed below. Your guided response posts should be a minimum of five well-developed sentences.
Do you agree or disagree with their choice of CQI Model given the measures they chose?
Give rationale why you either agree or disagree, and give one example that illustrates your answer.
Assignment: Committee for Quality Assurance
Assignment: Committee for Quality Assurance
You must proofread your paper. But do not strictly rely on your computer’s spell-checker and grammar-checker; failure to do so indicates a lack of effort on your part and you can expect your grade to suffer accordingly. Papers with numerous misspelled words and grammatical mistakes will be penalized. Read over your paper – in silence and then aloud – before handing it in and make corrections as necessary. Often it is advantageous to have a friend proofread your paper for obvious errors. Handwritten corrections are preferable to uncorrected mistakes.
Use a standard 10 to 12 point (10 to 12 characters per inch) typeface. Smaller or compressed type and papers with small margins or single-spacing are hard to read. It is better to let your essay run over the recommended number of pages than to try to compress it into fewer pages.
Likewise, large type, large margins, large indentations, triple-spacing, increased leading (space between lines), increased kerning (space between letters), and any other such attempts at “padding” to increase the length of a paper are unacceptable, wasteful of trees, and will not fool your professor.
The paper must be neatly formatted, double-spaced with a one-inch margin on the top, bottom, and sides of each page. When submitting hard copy, be sure to use white paper and print out using dark ink. If it is hard to read your essay, it will also be hard to follow your argument.
ADDITIONAL INSTRUCTIONS FOR THE CLASS
Discussion Questions (DQ)
Initial responses to the DQ should address all components of the questions asked, include a minimum of one scholarly source, and be at least 250 words.
Successful responses are substantive (i.e., add something new to the discussion, engage others in the discussion, well-developed idea) and include at least one scholarly source.
One or two sentence responses, simple statements of agreement or “good post,” and responses that are off-topic will not count as substantive. Substantive responses should be at least 150 words.
I encourage you to incorporate the readings from the week (as applicable) into your responses.
Weekly Participation
Your initial responses to the mandatory DQ do not count toward participation and are graded separately.
In addition to the DQ responses, you must post at least one reply to peers (or me) on three separate days, for a total of three replies.
Participation posts do not require a scholarly source/citation (unless you cite someone else’s work).
Part of your weekly participation includes viewing the weekly announcement and attesting to watching it in the comments. These announcements are made to ensure you understand everything that is due during the week.
APA Format and Writing Quality
Familiarize yourself with APA format and practice using it correctly. It is used for most writing assignments for your degree. Visit the Writing Center in the Student Success Center, under the Resources tab in LoudCloud for APA paper templates, citation examples, tips, etc. Points will be deducted for poor use of APA format or absence of APA format (if required).
Cite all sources of information! When in doubt, cite the source. Paraphrasing also requires a citation.
I highly recommend using the APA Publication Manual, 6th edition.
Use of Direct Quotes
I discourage overutilization of direct quotes in DQs and assignments at the Masters’ level and deduct points accordingly.
As Masters’ level students, it is important that you be able to critically analyze and interpret information from journal articles and other resources. Simply restating someone else’s words does not demonstrate an understanding of the content or critical analysis of the content.
It is best to paraphrase content and cite your source.
LopesWrite Policy
For assignments that need to be submitted to LopesWrite, please be sure you have received your report and Similarity Index (SI) percentage BEFORE you do a “final submit” to me.
Once you have received your report, please review it. This report will show you grammatical, punctuation, and spelling errors that can easily be fixed. Take the extra few minutes to review instead of getting counted off for these mistakes.
Review your similarities. Did you forget to cite something? Did you not paraphrase well enough? Is your paper made up of someone else’s thoughts more than your own?
Visit the Writing Center in the Student Success Center, under the Resources tab in LoudCloud for tips on improving your paper and SI score.
Late Policy
The university’s policy on late assignments is 10% penalty PER DAY LATE. This also applies to late DQ replies.
Please communicate with me if you anticipate having to submit an assignment late. I am happy to be flexible, with advance notice. We may be able to work out an extension based on extenuating circumstances.
If you do not communicate with me before submitting an assignment late, the GCU late policy will be in effect.
I do not accept assignments that are two or more weeks late unless we have worked out an extension.
As per policy, no assignments are accepted after the last day of class. Any assignment submitted after midnight on the last day of class will not be accepted for grading.
Communication
Communication is so very important. There are multiple ways to communicate with me:
Questions to Instructor Forum: This is a great place to ask course content or assignment questions. If you have a question, there is a good chance one of your peers does as well. This is a public forum for the class.
Individual Forum: This is a private forum to ask me questions or send me messages. This will be checked at least once every 24 hours.
