What are patient safety and quality indicators?
Inpatient Quality and Safety Indicators are a set of measures that provide a perspective on hospital quality of care using hospital data. These indicators reflect quality of care in the inpatient hospital setting.
How are quality indicators selected?
National organizations, such as those referred to on this website, have endorsed lists of quality indicators and safe practices that are supported by extensive research and are defined universally so all hospitals calculate statistics using the same methods. This provides an accurate way for hospitals to compare their quality data to those of other facilities and to identify opportunities for improvement.
What does the term "risk adjusted" mean?
The risk of complication or mortality varies by patient and procedure. For example, an older surgical patient, who has diabetes, is at greater risk for developing complications than a younger, healthy patient. Risk adjustment mathematically takes into account the differences in patient and procedure risk factors, so that comparisons can be as accurate as possible.