Award Program Process

1. Submit the online Application for Nomination by September 30, 2010.
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 submission deadlines. Critical 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 Sherri Gagner, Data Reporting Consultant, at 866-439-0863 or Trudy Carson at 866-439-5863 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. (Optional) Submit a Process Improvement Plan quarterly according to the data submission 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 uploaded to your QNET administrator’s inbox within two weeks following the established QNet data submission deadlines. 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 quarter 4, 2010 – quarters 1-3, 2011) will be used to determine award recipient status. Quarter 4, 2010 data is not due to QNet Exchange until May 15, 2011; 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 listed in the award criteria section.
8. After completion of the award program in February 2012, a statewide press release will announce all recipients and individual press releases will be available for each recipient hospital to disseminate to its local media, if it chooses. An award celebration will be held in Austin in April 2012. View award program timeline.