Comment Period for Nursing Sensitive Care Measures

The NQF today announced a comment period for the Nursing Sensitive Care Performance Measure Set. The project summary can be found here. The deadline for public comments is Feb 26, 2009.

This project summary document provides a history of the development of this measure set and how it was tested nationally. Of interest to the acute care quality professional is the last paragraph that reads:

Following a detailed discussion of each individual measure, there was consensus among the members to recommend that each of the measures move forward. The NSC measure set is due to undergo a maintenance review by the National Quality Forum in early 2009. The Hospital Quality Alliance Principals adopted the measure set in December 2008, pending NQF endorsement. The Joint
Commission is currently in the process of considering the set as an additional core measure selection option.

Remember that NQF endorsed measures have a tendency to be selected by CMS for public reporting. If you are wondering what measures make up this set, they are listed here:

1. Death among surgical inpatients with treatable serious complications (failure to rescue).
2. Pressure ulcer prevalence
3. Falls prevalence
4. Falls with injury
5. Restraint prevalence
6. Urinary catheter-associated UTI for ICU patients
7. Central line catheter-associated blood stream infection for ICU and HRN patients
8. Ventilator-associated pneumonia for ICU and HRN patients
9. Smoking cessation counseling for AMI
10. Smoking cessation counseling for HF
11. Smoking cessation counseling for PN
12. Skill Mix (RN vs LPN vs unlicensed assistive personnel, vs contract)
13. Nursing care hours per patient day
14. Practice environment scale - Nursing work index
15. Voluntary turnover