Patient Safety Indicators Technical Report A Supplement to the Hospital Performance Report 2018 Data Health Care Quality Assessment Office of Population Health New Jersey Department of Health _________________ * For inquiries, contact Markos Ezra, PhD, by phone at (800) 418-1397 or by email at
[email protected]. Patient____________________________________________________________________________________ Safety Indicators (PSIs) New Jersey 2018 Executive Summary The Office of Health Care Quality Assessment (HCQA) of the New Jersey Department of Health and Senior Services assesses health care quality using qualitative and quantitative data reported by hospitals to support performance monitoring related to patient care and safety. Specifically, HCQA produces consumer reports on cardiac surgery, hospital performance, and hospital quality indicators; reviews confidential reports and root-cause analyses of reportable medical errors; and maintains several databases to support licensure requirements. In order to enhance information, the Department provides to the public on hospital care, HCQA staff apply statistical tools developed by the Federal Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) to the New Jersey hospital discharge data commonly known as Uniform Billing (UB) data. This report presents findings resulting from the application of a statistical tool known as the Patient Safety Indicator (PSI) module to the 2018 New Jersey hospital discharge data. The PSI module currently in use contains 18 indicators that reflect the quality of care provided by hospitals. These indicators serve as flags for potential quality problems (adverse events) rather than provide definitive measures of quality of care. According to the AHRQ, the 18 indicators are selected based on their ability to screen out conditions present on admission from conditions that develop after admission, the potential preventability of the complication, and the ability of the indicator to identify medical error.