Bratzler to Serve on the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality(AHRQ) Workgroup

Dale Bratzler, DO, MPH, former American Health Quality Association(AHQA) President and Principal Clinical Investigator at the Oklahoma Foundation for Medical Quality, the state’s QIO, was recently selected to serve on the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) Quality Indicators Workgroup on Composite Measures for the Inpatient Quality Indicators (IQI) and the Patient Safety Indicators (PSI). The Workgroup consists of 15 individuals representing diverse organizations. It is part of the AHRQ QI Composite Measures General Workgroup that is tasked with developing composite measures for public reporting of hospital quality data at the state and national level. As part of the IQI/PSI Workgroup, Dr. Bratzler will work with others to:

• Identify and design the quality concept that each composite is intended to measure.
• Recommend the individual quality indicators that should be included in the composite.
• Determine weighting with which individual quality indicators could or should be combined
• Evaluate use of condition-specific quality of care composites.
• Discuss the methodological considerations that are appropriate or important when combining quality indicators and the considerations
  when composites are used for publicly reporting data.

Excerpt taken from the May 25, 2006, AHQA Matters Newsletter.