Quality of care in nurse-managed health centers.

PURPOSE

The purposes of this article are to: (a) describe the first, national, collection of quality measures for nurse-managed health centers (NMHCs); (b) present the quality findings; (c) compare findings with national ambulatory care benchmarks; and (d) discuss the feasibility of national quality data collection, including NMHCs' experiences with data submission and the utilization of findings.

METHODS

Quality outcomes appropriate for aggregated assessment of NMHC quality were proposed by a committee of the National Institute for Nursing Centers. Quality measures related to these outcomes were developed for breast cancer screening, cervical cancer screening, diabetes care, hypertension management, and smoking cessation based on protocols of the Health care Effectiveness Data and Information Set. Nine NMHCs were recruited to participate in retrospective data collection, manually from record audits or electronically from the submission of data files.

RESULTS

Overall, quality measure findings compared favorably with national benchmarks, with particularly high quality demonstrated for chronic disease care management.

CONCLUSIONS

Good to very good quality of care was documented across NMHCs, and NMHCs compared favorably with national benchmarks. Data were useful to NMHCs in identifying quality strengths and areas for improvement. National data collection proved to be feasible.