Health IT can streamline quality data collection

While collecting quality data for health plans, state and federal regulators still costs providers a bundle, implementing the right health IT infrastructure could ease the strain, according by a new report from the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ). Right now, either hospital medical records departments or medical group practice administrators end up collecting the data, a costly and time-consuming exercise which only gets more taxing from year to year. Still, until everyone agrees on common data standards, even the best technology can't do much to help, AHRQ researchers concede. However, the industry can take several steps to harmonize data requirements. For one thing, it's critical that EMR vendors to have a clear idea of what providers need to capture quality data, the report noted. AHRQ would also like to see the industry develop a core data set which can be gathered at the point of service; that way, the data needs to be collected only once, researchers said.

To get more data from the report:
- read this Modern Healthcare item (sub. req.)
- read the AHRQ report (.pdf)

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