NEWS

MHA and Quantros Partner to Power Voluntary Hospital Reporting Initiative

Participating Hospitals Can Meet JCAHO and CMS Requirements and Participate in the National Voluntary Reporting Initiative - Without Additional Data Collection

Quantros, a leading provider of real-time, web-based benchmarking, accreditation, and performance improvement solutions for the healthcare industry, has agreed to power the Kansas City Metropolitan Health Care Council and Missouri Hospital Association?s voluntary public reporting initiative, in accordance with the American Hospital Association?s national initiative, "The Quality Initiative: A Public Resource on Hospital Performance". Approximately thirty hospitals in the Kansas City metropolitan area will be the first to begin using the system.

The Kansas City Metropolitan Health Care Council and the Missouri Hospital Association seek to gather record level performance data from their member organizations to build a regional and statewide comparative measurement database for the care of patients with heart attacks, heart failure and pneumonia. Healthcare organizations using the MHA Management Services Corporation?s "QualityWorks®" system (which is powered by Quantros), or other Core Measures vendors to submit indicator data to the Joint Commission or the CMS CART tool will be able to contribute data to a central repository developed for the voluntary reporting initiative - without any additional data collection effort.

The easy-to-use system will allow MHA and KCMHC to create comparative trend and benchmark reports in real time (similar to the individual hospitals that use the MHA QualityWorks® system).

"Our voluntary reporting initiative benefits patients and healthcare organizations by allowing providers in the Kansas City metropolitan area and the rest of Missouri to collaboratively share best practices and identify opportunities for improvement. The Quantros platform gives participating hospitals the ability to quickly and easily collect data, create reports and graphs, and compare their performance to peers," said Becky Miller, MHA vice president, quality and regulatory advocacy.

The initiative supports the American Hospital Association?s effort to build a national public reporting database - an initiative with the support of state hospital associations, the Joint Commission on Healthcare Accreditation (JCAHO), and the Center for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS).

"We?re proud to be an instrumental part of this national initiative, " said Rajnish Mishra, MBA, PhD, President and CEO of Quantros. "The scalability and flexibility of the Quantros platform will make expanding participation beyond these initial 30 hospitals seamless."

Through resellers, nearly 400 hospitals across the country use the Quantros real-time, web-based platform to support JCAHO Core Measures and CMS 7th Scope of Work data upload and reporting.

About Quantros

Founded in 1996, Quantros provides real-time knowledge creation solutions for benchmarking, patient safety, accreditation and compliance, and outcomes monitoring for leading healthcare providers, payers, and pharmaceutical manufacturers. Quantros' web delivered applications provide a standard platform for automating resource intensive manual processes. Through a variety of direct sales and vendor partners, nearly 700 hospitals are licensed to use Quantros? web-based technology solutions.

About the Missouri Hospital Association

The Missouri Hospital Association is a not-for-profit association in Jefferson City that represents 142 Missouri hospitals. In addition to representation and advocacy on behalf of its membership, the association offers continuing education programs on current health care topics and seeks to educate the public, as well as legislative representatives, about health care issues.

About the Kansas City Metropolitan Health Care Council

The Kansas City Metropolitan Health Care Council is a regional office of the Kansas and Missouri hospital associations.