Performance Measures and Quality Improvement in Care Coordination Health Informatics Information Technology Section Special Invited Session

Community care coordination is a systematic approach for reducing health disparities by identifying health and support services needs such as insurance, transportation or housing assistance, and connecting underserved and high-risk patients to appropriate sources of health care and social and support services. This NIMHD-funded study responded to the lack of existing measures of community care coordination quality and used a participatory, consensus-based research approach to community care coordination measure design and testing. The study's collaborative process engaged five diverse community sites and received input from community stakeholders and technical experts. In this interactive roundtable session, the presenters will highlight how they used technology to support their work, including the development of a uniform database and centralized web portal to collect, store, and report on standardized performance measures. They will review several phases of the project including site visits and the development of a series of measurement domains and measure specifications, as well as the testing of measures at the sites using a combination of data sources including care coordination records, hospital records, and a client survey. This project contributes to the field of community care coordination measure development by showing that despite challenges and data collection limitations, it is possible to develop carefully designed and tested quality measures and comparative performance data. During this session, the presenters will highlight the final set of measures, provide an opportunity for others to share their experiences in measure development, and discuss the need for and use of standardized measures in this area.