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Better Quality Information

Overview

The Better Quality Information to Improve Care for Medicare Beneficiaries (BQI) Project is a CMS-funded quality improvement organization (QIO) special project in which the Delmarva Foundation for Medical Care has subcontracted with 6 communities, or pilot sites. These pilot sites are testing methods to aggregate Medicare claims data with data from commercial health plans and, in some cases, Medicaid, in order to calculate and report quality measures for physician groups and, in some cases, individual physicians. 

The 6 communities working with Delmarva are:

  • Arizona State University Center for Health Information & Research (CHIR);
  • California Cooperative Health Care Reporting Initiative (CCHRI);
  • Indiana Health Information Exchange (IHIE);
  • Massachusetts Health Quality Partners (MHQP);
  • MN Community Measurement (MNCM); and
  • Wisconsin Collaborative for Healthcare Quality (WCHQ). 

The results from this project will be used to guide future efforts for aggregating Medicare claims data with data from other payers to produce quality measure results that provide a more comprehensive picture of the quality of services being provided by physicians to Medicare beneficiaries. 

The BQI Project also aims to: 1) provide beneficiaries in these 6 communities with health care performance information on the physicians who treat them, in order to help them select physicians and make treatment choices, and 2) to provide performance information to the physician groups and/or physicians who treat these beneficiaries, which can be used by the physician groups and/or physicians to improve the quality of care they provide.  This project is one piece of the Department of Health and Human Services' Value-driven Health Care Initiative.  For more information about this Initiative, please refer to the Value-driven Health Care Initiative link in the Related Links Outside CMS Section below.

The data provided in the downloadable files (Excel and comma-separated-value, or CSV files) below include measure rates for physician groups and/or individual physicians in pilot communities. When available, there will be one file per community. Each community will report on various measures. The Important Notes document below describes the measure rates and associated numerators and denominators that can be found in each file. It is important to read the information in this document because it explains the limitations to the measures data contained in each file, including the differences across communities. 

The "Better Quality and Information (BQI) to Improve Care for Medicare Beneficiaries Project Final Report" is available as a downloadable document in the "Downloads" section below. The final report contains analysis related to methodological questions, lessons learned regarding reporting performance measures to physicians and consumers, issues related to individual physician-level calculation and reporting, as well as project evaluation and conclusions. 

Downloads
BQI Final Report [ZIP 4.5 MB]

Important Notes [PDF 50 KB]

IHIE Data File [ZIP 4 KB]

WCHQ Data File [ZIP 20 KB]

MNCM Data File [ZIP 30 KB]

MHQP Data File  [ZIP 43 KB]
Related Links Inside CMS
There are no Related Links Inside CMS.
Related Links Outside CMSExternal Linking Policy

California Cooperative Healthcare Reporting Initiative

Indiana Health Information Exchange

Massachusetts Health Quality Partners

MN Community Measurement

The Center for Health Information & Research (CHIR)

The Wisconsin Collaborative for Healthcare Quality

Value-Driven Health Care

 

Page Last Modified: 01/13/2009 12:06:17 PM
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