Quality Healthcare: Measuring Nurse Practitioner Performance Every person should have access to quality healthcare and feel confident in the care they receive. The National Committee for Quality Assurance (NCQA) was formed to ensure the quality of patient care and measurement of patient outcomes with set standards This paper will discuss a performance measure developed by Healthcare Effectiveness Data and Information Set (HEDIS) in which is a performance measurement tool that millions of health insurance companies use (NCQA, 2019). Three patient interventions will be discussed, and information on how a nurse practitioner (NP) would specifically measure the outcomes of the interventions listed. This paper will include how the primary care interventions result in improved patient outcomes and cost savings for the practice. Lastly, this paper will discuss how the interventions resulted in improved patient ratings and a conclusion. Patient Interventions HEDIS has six domains of care in which performance in healthcare is measured. The interventions discussed will be from the domain Effectiveness of Care (NCQA, 2019). The three interventions selected from this domain are under prevention and screenings in which include: breast cancer screenings, cervical cancer screenings, and colorectal screenings (NCQA, 2019). As people age, screenings begin to play a significant role in their life. It is essential as healthcare providers that we make sure our patients are educated about the screenings and the importance of the screenings. Regardless of what the patient is being seen for, it should become a regular part of their assessment to ask them if they have had their screenings. If the patient falls within the age category or is high risk, and they have not had their screenings, it is important that we must get those scheduled for them while they are there Breast cancer screenings or mammograms should occur every two years, beginning in average-risk women at the age of 40-50 years old and last through age 74 (HRSA, 2017). The Women’s Preventive Services Initiative recommends cervical cancer screening for average-risk women aged 21 to 65 years by getting cervical cytology (pap test) every three years (HRSA, 2017). Evidence of colorectal cancer usually shows signs around 50 years of age, and that is the age of screening recommendation begins for an average-risk adult (Hogstrom, 2018). The screening for colorectal cancer should happen once every ten years if each screening comes back clear, and family history is insignificant of colorectal cancer. After learning about each of these screenings, it shows how important it is that the patients in the practice have been getting them scheduled as they should. Every woman seen in the practice that is age forty and above should be asked about their breast cancer screenings, women beginning at age 21 should be asked about cervical cancer screenings, and women and men 50 years of age and older should be asked about colorectal screenings. If the patients state they have not had their screenings they should be educated about them and scheduled to get it done. The screening questions should all be a part of the patient’s initial assessment as each patient comes into the office for visits. When implementing the interventions listed in practice, we must measure the outcomes as another crucial step. Measuring performance within practice allows an organization to document how care is currently provided and sets the foundation for improvement (HRSA, 2017). A measurement tool that can be used to track patient outcomes from each of the interventions of implementing cancer screenings is the CAHPS patient experience survey (AHRQ, 2019). Each person that is a patient at the practice will get a mailed survey asking if they were asked about their screenings during their visit, if they were scheduled while they were
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