All FSI Projects

Emergency Department Prevention Quality Indicators

Researchers

Ellen Schultz
Project Manager
Kathryn McDonald
Principal Investigator
Sheryl Davies
Investigator

The emergency department (ED) is an important source of care in a community. ED encounters can reflect aspects of community health, such as access to care, care coordination, quality of community-based care, underlying disease burden, availability of community-based supportive services, and other community resources. This project developed a new set of Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) Quality Indicators (QI)—the Emergency Department Prevention Quality Indicators (ED PQIs)—that use data collected from ED encounters as a “window into community health.” The indicators are not intended to reflect quality of care delivered within the ED. Rather, they are designed to reflect aspects of community health that are visible (e.g., measurable) from the ED. The ED PQIs are organized into two modules: General Health (six indicators) and Behavioral Health (five indicators). They can identify targets for community health improvement, including guiding population health management and improvement, research to identify health disparities and evaluate intervention targets and approaches, informing resource or policy-making decisions, and public reporting to provide comparisons across communities.

Contact

Ellen Schultz