What's New
The Joint Commission is pilot testing a draft set of Blood Management performance measures at hospitals across the country from February 2010 – July 2010. After the pilot results have been compiled, the technical advisory panel (TAP) will convene in late 2010 to review the pilot test results and recommend a final measure set to be submitted to NQF for endorsement. The following measures are included in the pilot test, the majority of which apply to patients > 4 months of age:
- Transfusion Consent
- RBC Transfusion Indication
- Plasma Transfusion Indication
- Platelet/Prophylactic Platelet Transfusion Indication
- Blood Administration Documentation
- Preoperative Anemia Screening
- Preoperative Blood Type Screening
The objectives for pilot testing include:
- Evaluation of the reliability of the individual measures and associated data elements
- Enhancement of measure specifications
- Assessment of the data collection effort
- Assessment of sampling strategies
Background
February 2007 - Key thought leaders from various organizations convened a stakeholder meeting to discuss whether sufficient evidence existed to develop Blood Management Performance Measures (Phase I). These stakeholders supported proceeding with this project, and suggested that priority areas in blood management be identified utilizing a multi-focused approach of three intersecting activities: blood conservation, appropriate transfusion and a patient-centered focus.
January 2008 - Phase II of the Blood Management performance measures project was initiated to identify, develop, and test a set of standardized measures to help assess blood management in the hospital setting. Partial funding for the project was provided through an unrestricted educational grant from Bayer Healthcare LLC. The Call for Technical Advisory Panel (TAP) Nominations and the Call for Measures were posted from January 10, 2008 through February 2, 2008. The TAP members convened in April 2008 and identified 19 measures addressing key aspects of blood management. The 19 Blood Management Candidate Measure Profiles were posted for public comments from July 17, 2008 through August 19, 2008. After review of the public comments by the TAP in December 2008, the TAP recommended that 12 of the 19 candidate measures be incorporated into a subset of performance measures.
August 2009 - The Joint Commission was pleased to announce that support for the testing phase of the Blood Management Performance Measures Project has been provided by unrestricted educational grants from the ITxMsm Blood Science Foundation and ZymoGenetics, Inc. A “Call for Hospitals” to participate in alpha testing was posted from August 24 – September 15, 2009 and over 50 hospitals responded. Ten measures were evaluated during the alpha testing phase.
December 2009 – The technical advisory panel reviewed the alpha results and recommended that seven measures move forward with modifications for the pilot test. Over 75 hospitals volunteered to pilot test the measures and were selected to participate.
Direct project inquires to Harriet Gammon, MSN, RN, CPHQ at hgammon@jointcommission.org.