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MassachusettsAcute Care Quality Measures Compared to Achievable Benchmarks

The NHQDR quality measures specific to Acute Care are compared to achievable benchmarks, which are derived from the top-performing States. Better performance of a State can mean higher or lower values of a measure, depending on the desired outcome. For example, low values are desirable for measures such as infant mortality, whereas high values are desirable for measures such as preventative screening. The categories of achievement have been standardized across the measure definitions so that:

Far away from benchmark - a State's value for a measure has not achieved 50% of the benchmark.

Close to benchmark - a State's value for a measure is between 50% and 90% of a benchmark (i.e., worse than the benchmark but has achieved at least half of the benchmark but not as much as 90% of a benchmark).

Achieved benchmark or better - a State's value for a measure is no worse than 90% of the benchmark value, the measure has achieved the benchmark. This category also includes the case in which the measure’s value is equal to or better than the benchmark.

Measures That Achieved Benchmark or Better
Measure	Estimate	Benchmark	Distance to Benchmark
Patients with colon cancer who received surgical resection of colon cancer that included at least 12 lymph nodes pathologically examined	94.3	95.4	1.1%
Hospital patients who received influenza vaccination	95.1	96.6	1.6%
Women under age 70 treated for breast cancer with breast-conserving surgery who received radiation therapy to the breast within 1 year of diagnosis	92.5	96.2	3.8%
Patients with tuberculosis who completed a curative course of treatment within 1 year of initiation of treatment	89.3	95.4	6.4%
Women with clinical Stage I-IIb breast cancer who received axillary node dissection or sentinel lymph node biopsy (SLNB) at the time of surgery (lumpectomy or mastectomy)	87.9	96.4	8.8%

Measures That Are Close to Benchmark
Measure	Estimate	Benchmark	Distance to Benchmark
People age 12 and over treated for substance abuse who completed treatment course	54.0	65.2	17.2%
Adult hospital patients who did not receive good communication about discharge information	9.3	7.7	20.5%
Adult hospital patients who sometimes or never had good communication about medications they received in the hospital	10.6	7.8	36.6%
Home health care patients who had to be admitted to the hospital	15.0	10.5	42.9%

Measures That Are Far From Benchmark
Measure	Estimate	Benchmark	Distance to Benchmark
Home health care patients who had an emergency department visit and then hospitalized	13.6	8.9	53.5%
Home health care patients who had an emergency department visit without a hospitalization	4.4	2.8	55.7%
Adult hospital patients who strongly disagree or disagree that staff took their preferences and those of their family and caregiver into account when deciding what the patients discharge health care would be	5.2	3.2	63.0%
Hospital inpatient stays involving opioid-related diagnoses per 100,000 population	463.8	102.9	350.9%
Emergency department visits involving opioid-related diagnoses per 100,000 population	527.1	65.2	707.8%

National Healthcare Quality and Disparities Reports

MassachusettsAcute Care Quality Measures Compared to Achievable Benchmarks

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