title: Cleveland Health Quality Choice (CHQC)--an ongoing collaborative, community-based outcomes assessment program.
abstract: Cleveland Health Quality Choice (CHQC) is a unique community-based program designed to provide more efficient delivery of healthcare services through routine collection and dissemination of selected patient interventions and outcomes. This effort, coordinated by a consortium of business, hospital, and medical leaders, provides comparative public data on hospital performance. In the ICU, this effort involves collection of Acute Physiology and Chronic Health Evaluation (APACHE) III, as well as severity and prognostic data. To date, results suggest that a higher percentage of patients admitted to the ICU are at low risk of death or adverse outcome when compared with a national benchmark using APACHE III. Risk-adjusted mortality rates are lower and length of stay is shorter than predicted. CHQC demonstrates that cooperative public efforts, undertaken by groups with often divergent interests and using objective risk estimates, can provide useful data for hospital quality improvement activities and market-based health reform efforts.
authors.affiliation: Department of Anesthesiology, University of Pittsburgh Medical Center, PA 15260.
authors.forename: C A
authors.initials: CA
authors.lastname: Sirio
authors.forename: D C
authors.initials: DC
authors.lastname: Angus
authors.forename: G E
authors.initials: GE
authors.lastname: Rosenthal
mesh_terms: D003625:Data Collection; D017598:Efficiency, Organizational / Q000706:statistics & numerical data*; D006265:Health Care Coalitions; D018166:Health Care Reform; D006302:Health Services Research / Q000458:organization & administration*; D017052:Hospital Mortality; D006801:Humans; D007255:Information Services; D007362:Intensive Care Units; D007373:Interinstitutional Relations; D007902:Length of Stay / Q000706:statistics & numerical data; D008389:Marketing of Health Services; D009820:Ohio / Q000453:epidemiology; D017063:Outcome Assessment, Health Care / Q000706:statistics & numerical data*; D016730:Program Development; D011785:Quality Assurance, Health Care / Q000458:organization & administration*; D012720:Severity of Illness Index