URL:

http://www.qualitymeasures.ahrq.gov

Description:

Conquest 2.0, as this site is known, is a public-use, free software system used for collecting and evaluating clinical performance measures. Clinical performance measures are tools used to evaluate the quality of health care (the correct action at the right time) given to patients. Conquest utilizes a downloadable PDF file structure to help users find, comprehend, compare, evaluate and select appropriate measures to improve quality of care. Clinical performance measures come from many public or private organizations, including the Department of Veterans Affairs and the Health Care Financing Administration. The Harvard School of Public Health, The MEDSTAT Group, and Mikalix and Company developed it under a contract from AHCPR. The original database (Conquest 1.0) was developed by Dr. R. Heather Palmer, Dr. Ann Lawthers, et. al, from the Harvard School of Public Health.

Types of Information or Instruments:

Measures can be located by searching for condition, age group, level of care, type of data, whether reliability and validity testing was completed, and special considerations for analysis. Users can follow one of three paths: performance measures (conditions, diseases and procedures), measure sets (measures with a common underlying purpose and developer), or conditions. Once information is located, the user can create and print a report.

Quantity of Instruments:

The database contains 1,197 clinical performance measures, and 53 measure sets.

Quality of Instrument Descriptions:

Information provided for each measure includes the name, measure code assigned by the Conquest developers, clinical rationale, and contact information. A description of the numerator and denominator is provided for each measure. There is quite a lot of information provided for each measure that is reported only in yes/no format, e.g. “Denominator data source: record? Yes; Denominator data source: survey? No.” Examples of information in this format are: method of patient identification, inclusions and exclusions, numerator and denominator data source, the type of setting it was developed for, the outcome measure, the age range, and how to interpret results. Overall, there is an abundance of information provided, but the quality of the information does not reach beyond simply reporting “yes” or “no” in many cases.

Quality of Psychometric Information:

Conquest reports only that validity and reliability tests were performed, and does not provide actual psychometric information. Validity and reliability is reported available for only some of the measures.

Scale accessibility:

Included on a measure’s report is contact information for developers, including a name, address, phone number and fax number if available.

Site provides actual scale items:

The site does not provide actual measures.

User-friendly navigation:

The software is easy to use, with a Microsoft Access-style database providing simple point and click menu bars. Searching for measures is done by typing in text boxes.

Other types of Information:

There is information on 57 clinical conditions including depression, cancer, diabetes, heart attack and pregnancy, among many other conditions prevalent in the general population. Information includes prevalence, risks, comorbidities, utilization, cost, age groups and adverse outcomes.

Hints:

Users can add their own measure to the database and compare it to pre-existing measures.

Category:

Nondisease-specific > Functional/Health Status