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:

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	94.8	95.3	0.5%
Stroke patients prescribed statin medication at hospital discharge	97.5	98.6	1.1%
Hospital patients who received influenza vaccination	95.7	97.0	1.4%
Stroke patients who received venous thromboembolism (VTE) prophylaxis	96.8	98.7	2.0%
Women under age 70 treated for breast cancer with breast-conserving surgery who received radiation therapy to the breast within 1 year of diagnosis	94.4	97.0	2.7%
Stroke patients with educational material addressing activation of emergency medical system, follow-up after discharge, educations prescribed at discharge, risk factors for stroke, warning signs and symptoms of stroke	92.2	96.7	4.7%
Patients with tuberculosis who completed a curative course of treatment within 1 year of initiation of treatment	88.4	95.4	7.4%
Acute stroke patients for whom IV thrombolytic therapy was initiated at hospital within 3 hours of time last known well	86.0	92.9	7.4%
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)	89.5	96.8	7.5%

Measures That Are Close to Benchmark

Measure	Estimate	Benchmark	Distance to Benchmark
Hospital patients who received pneumococcal immunization	82.4	97.2	15.2%
People age 12 and over treated for substance abuse who completed treatment course	55.0	65.2	15.7%
Adult hospital patients who did not receive good communication about discharge information	9.4	7.7	21.8%
Adult hospital patients who sometimes or never had good communication about medications they received in the hospital	10.4	7.8	34.0%

Measures That Are Far From Benchmark

Measure	Estimate	Benchmark	Distance to Benchmark
Home health care patients who had to be admitted to the hospital	27.3	17.7	53.9%
Home health care patients who had an emergency department visit without a hospitalization	4.4	2.9	54.4%
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	5.1	3.2	57.4%
Home health care patients who had an emergency department visit and then hospitalized	22.5	13.5	66.2%
Hospital inpatient stays involving opioid-related diagnoses per 100,000 population	452.5	102.9	339.9%
Emergency department visits involving opioid-related diagnoses per 100,000 population	562.4	65.2	761.9%

Measures With No Available Benchmark Information or Supplemental Measures

Measure	Estimate	Benchmark	Distance to Benchmark
Median time in minutes patients with psychiatric or mental health conditions spent at emergency department (ED) from ED arrival to ED departure	323.0
Patients who developed a blood clot while in the hospital who did not get treatment that could have prevented it	1.8
Median time in minutes patients spent in the emergency department before they were seen by a healthcare professional	34.0
Median time in minutes spent in the emergency department (ED) from admission decision to ED departure for admitted patients	125.0
Median time in minutes patients spent at emergency department (ED) from ED arrival to ED departure	167.0
Median time in minutes spent in the emergency department (ED) from ED arrival to ED departure for admitted patients	325.0
Median time in minutes patients who came to the emergency department with broken bones had to wait before getting pain medication	51.0
Radiation therapy was recommended or administered following any mastectomy within 1 year of diagnosis of breast cancer for women with 4 positive regional lymph nodes	95.6
Outpatients with chest pain or possible heart attack who received fibrinolytic therapy within 30 minutes of arrival	82.0
Median time in minutes outpatients with chest pain or possible heart attack from emergency department arrival to get ECG	7.0
Median time in minutes outpatients with chest pain or possible heart attack who got drugs to break up blood clots after arrival	22.0
Combination chemotherapy was recommended or administered within 4 months of diagnosis for women under 70 with AJCC T1cN0MO or Stage IB-III hormone receptor negative breast cancer	97.2
Use of brachytherapy in patients treated with primary radiation with curative intent in any stage of cervical cancer	83.3
Adjuvant chemotherapy was recommended or administered within 4 months of diagnosis for patients under the age of 80 with AJCC Stage III lymph node positive colon cancer	89.3
Patients who came to the emergency department (ED) with stroke symptoms and received head CT or MRI who received the interpretation of the results within 45 minutes of ED arrival	76.0
Median time in minutes before outpatients with chest pain or possible heart attack who needed specialized care were transferred to another hospital and did not have contraindication to fibrinolytic	57.0