Inpatient psych quality data added to Hospital Compare

Data on four quality measures for inpatient psychiatric facilities will be available effective today at the CMS' consumer-facing website Hospital Compare.

The data, collected from 1,753 inpatient psychiatric facilities from Oct. 1, 2012, through March 31, 2013, will include hours of physical restraint and seclusion, and the percentages of cases in which the facility created post-discharge continuing-care plans and transmitted a post-discharge continuing-care plan to the provider delivering the next level of care.

Technical issues prevented the display of data regarding how often patients were discharged on multiple antipsychotic medications and whether there was appropriate justification for those medications, the CMS said in a news release. The agency expects to post that information next year.

Publication of the data is required under two federal statutes as part of the CMS' Inpatient Psychiatric Facility Quality Reporting Program.

“This is an important first step in publicly reporting inpatient psychiatric facility quality measures on Hospital Compare,” Dr. Patrick Conway, the CMS' chief medical officer and deputy administrator for innovation and quality, said in the release. “Offering a set of meaningful quality measures for psychiatric facilities will help consumers make informed decisions and will encourage quality improvement within the clinician community, which shares CMS' strong commitment to the best possible patient care.”

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