Award Program Process

1. Submit the online Application for Nomination by January 31, 2008.

2. Collect quarterly data on the quality indicators using your Joint Commission vendor or CMS Abstraction & Reporting Tool (CART). Data must be transmitted to the QualityNet Exchange (QNet) according to the established data transmission deadlines. Crital access hospitals (CAHs) must sign the Hospital Quality Alliance Pledge to Participate agreement to publically report data for the HF and PNE measures. CAHs must also register for QNet Exchange. Please contact Trudy Carson at 866-439-0863 to request a QNet registration packet if you are a critical access hospital needing access to QNet.

   See Indicators included in the Appropriate Care Measure (ACM).

3. Identify opportunities to improve the care process and implement changes that will result in compliance with evidence-based medicine.

4. Submit a Process Improvement Plan quarterly according to the data transmission deadlines established by QNet. These documents will provide a brief description of activities and interventions that you are testing/implementing to improve your performance on the quality indicators. 

5. Quarterly data reports containing individualized hospital scores will be posted on the award Web site within two weeks following the established QNet data transmission deadline. An e-mail notification will be sent to the award program hospital contact when these reports are available. 

6. At the end of the program, your hospital’s aggregate ACM score (using quarters 1 - 4, 2008) will be used to determine award recipient status. Quarter 4, 2008 data is not due to QNet Exchange until May 15, 2009; therefore, recipients will be notified after TMF Health Quality Institute has access to the data and can compute the ACM score.

7. Other requirements necessary to receive an award are that your hospital:
   • Passes validation for the most current three quarters of data available at the end of the program (most likely quarters 1-3, 2008)
   • Cannot be considered “worse than expected” for any mortality measure topic (acute myocardial infarction, heart failure or pneumonia) for the most current data available (not required for Critical Access Hospitals)

   • Must have submitted the Hospital Consumer Assessment of Healthcare Providers and Systems Survey (HCAHPS) (not required for Critical Access Hospitals)

     Click here for more information about the CMS Mortality Measures

8. After completion of the award program in August 2009, a statewide press release will announce all recipients and individual press releases will be sent to each recipient hospital to disseminate to its local media, if it chooses. An award celebration will be held in Austin in August 2009.

9. Hospitals awarded the Texas Health Care Quality Improvement Award, Award of Excellence or Quality Improvement Achievement Award, may be requested to present on one or more clinical topics through one or more TMF activities, e.g., workshops, seminars, Web-based seminars, conference calls or newsletters.