JCI Standard MCI.20 – Aggregate data and information support patient care, organisation management, and the quality management program

Hospitals seeking accreditation status or planning for an accreditation re-survey process for example, accreditation status from the Joint Commission International (JCI), must ensure that their aggregate data and information supports patient care, organisation management, and their hospital quality management program.

Image credit : A representation of data found @ http://www.celframe.com/blogs/ by Jer Thorp, a data artist

Health Information Management (HIM) / Medical Records (MR) practitioners and their HIM/MR department in hospitals are responsible for aggregate data based on performance and utilisation by collecting, retrieving, compiling, calculating, analysing, and reporting descriptive health care statistics regarding for example admission, discharge, and length of stay of patients which are used internally by hospitals to describe the types and numbers of patients treated, that is patient-centric data which is directly related to the patient population treated.

The primary purpose of collecting patient-centric data is to provide factual numerical information using automated computer systems or manually.

HIM/MR practitioners play a vital role in collecting and verifying patient-centric data and are responsible for monitoring operations and overseeing the processes at their hospital which generate the patient-centric data. HIM/MR practitioners must accept that their role is most important as hospital statistics provide a benchmark upon which decisions are made to operate and manage the hospital.

The factual numerical information is used for clinical and management decisions making by summarising them into descriptive statistics.  Descriptive statistics summarise a set of data from the descriptive health care statistics and prepared into various presentation techniques and tools (e.g., bar graphs, pie charts, line diagrams, and so on) which help give meaning to statistics. In addition to reporting the number of patients treated, HIM/MR departments will also calculate rates and percentages of deaths, autopsies, infections, and so on.

Ongoing aggregate data and information related processes based on performance and utilisation that support patient care in a hospital, will meet the requirement of the JCI Standard MCI.20, ME 1.

It is common for hospitals to generate monthly and annual reports that describe the number of patients treated and the types of services delivered. This transformed-based data are used to prepare for example an annual report for the board of directors.  This report is used to make decisions that impact hospital operations and planning. Aggregate data and information used in this way to support organisation management, meets the requirement of the JCI Standard MCI.20, ME 2.

I shall end this post here and continue more on the JCI Standard MCI.20 in another post. I think the aspect of data quality is most important and deserves another post.

References :
Joint Commission International 2010, Joint Commission International Accreditation Standards For Hospitals, 4th edn, JCI, USA

Michelle, AG & Mary, JB 2011, Essentials of Health Information Management: Principles and Practices, 2nd edn, Delmar, Cengage Learning, NY, USA