Background
The Joint Commission received funding from The Partnership for Prevention and The Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) and their Center for Substance Abuse Treatment (CSAT) in the Department of Health and Human Services to develop a set of performance measures to address the assessment and treatment of tobacco, alcohol, and other drug use and dependence for all hospitalized patients. This new measure set is intended to enhance and broaden the scope of the existing measures and ultimately replace the current National Hospital Quality Measures for Adult Smoking Cessation Advice/Counseling in the acute myocardial infarction (AMI-4), heart failure (HF-4), and pneumonia (PN-4) measure sets.
A Technical Advisory Panel (TAP) convened on June, 24, 2009 and 8 new measures were constructed. These measures were posted and available for public comment from September 1 - 30, 2009.
Update – November, 2009
Over 2,000 individuals and representatives from various healthcare organizations participated in the public comment survey. The survey results were reviewed and discussed by the Technical Advisory Panel (TAP) on October 28, 2009. Based on survey results and panel recommendations, modifications to the measures were approved by the panel. These measure specifications are currently being updated to reflect survey and TAP member recommendations.
The current candidate measures for the set, Screening and Treating Tobacco and Alcohol Use include:
1 – Tobacco Use Screening
2 - Tobacco Use Treatment
3 - Tobacco Use Treatment - Management at Discharge
4 - Tobacco Use Treatment - Assessing Status after Discharge
5 - Alcohol Use Screening
6 - Alcohol Use - Brief Intervention
7 - Alcohol and Other Drug Use – Treatment Management at Discharge
8 - Alcohol and Other Drug Use – Assessing Status after Discharge
Beginning in early 2010, these measures will undergo a 6-month pilot-testing phase to 1) assess the reliability of the measures and their associated data elements, and 2) obtain information about how the measures and specifications can be enhanced to provide more reliable data.
If your hospital would be interested in participating in this pilot-testing phase or if you have questions about the requirements for participation, please contact Joanne Hafner (jhafner@jointcommission.org).