AHRQ Launches Free Software to Help Organizations Compile and Publish Hospital Quality Data

The Department of Health & Human Services' Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality has launched a free software application intended to help states, hospitals and other organizations more efficiently compile, analyze and post data on quality of hospital care, its cost and how that care is used, according to an AHRQ news release.
The software, called My Own Network Powered by AHRQ (MONAHRQ), allows an organization to enter hospital administrative data including patient characteristics, diagnoses, procedures, health insurance type and charges. MONAHRQ processes that information and then creates a website that the host user can customize by selecting a specific color scheme, inserting logos and using other features, according to the release.

A website created using MONAHRQ will provide information in four areas:

• Quality of care for specific hospitals — provides information about patient safety, patient deaths in the hospital and other quality-related issues;
• Provision of services by hospital for health conditions and procedures — provides information about the number of patient discharges, charges, costs and length of hospitalizations for specific hospitals;
• Potentially avoidable hospitalizations — creates maps of county-by-county rates for potentially avoidable hospitalizations; and
• Rates of health conditions and procedures — provides information about the prevalence of diseases or medical procedures through maps of county-by-county rates for selected conditions and procedures.

Organizations that use the website should be able to cut the time needed to create a quality data website from up to a year to a few days, according to the release.

Download the free software by visiting, http://monahrq.ahrq.gov.