Measurement is essential to monitoring success and helps guide your team towards your specific intervention goal. Measurement also tells us what’s working and what’s not, and provides evidence to inspire other healthcare providers to improve the quality of patient safety.
Patient Safety Metrics Training Manual
MedRec (Acute Care) Measures
| MedRec-Acute 1 - Mean Number of Undocumented Intentional Discrepancies per Patient |
Decrease 75% |
Outcome |
| MedRec-Acute 2 - Mean Number of Unintentional Discrepancies per Patient |
Decrease 75% |
Outcome |
| MedRec-Acute 3 - Medication Reconciliation Success Index (Optional Measure) |
Set % |
Process |
| MedRec-Acute 4 - Medication Reconciliation at Discharge |
100% |
Process |
| MedRec-Acute 5 - Percentage of Patients Reconciled at Admission |
100% |
Process |
MedRec (Home Care) Measures
| MedRec-HC 1 - Percentage of eligible Home Care clients with a Best Possible Medication History (BPMH) |
95% |
Process |
| MedRec-HC 2 - The average time to complete a Best Possible Medication History (BPMH) |
Set |
Balancing |
| MedRec-HC 3 - Percentage of eligible Home Care clients with at least one discrepancy |
Set % |
Process |
| MedRec-HC 4 - Percentage of Medication Discrepancies Identified by Type |
100% |
Information |
MedRec (Long Term Care) Measures
| MedRec-LTC 1 - Mean Number of Undocumented Intentional Discrepancies per Resident in Long-Term Care |
Decrease 75% |
Information |
| MedRec-LTC 2 - Mean Number of Unintentional Discrepancies per Resident in Long-Term Care |
Decrease 75% |
Outcome |
| MedRec-LTC 3 - Percentage of Long-Term Care Residents Reconciled |
100% |
Process |
Safer Healthcare Now! (SHN) has two types of measures for each of the interventions: process measures, outcome measures. Some interventions also have balancing measures. Below are examples of each.
Outcome measures - answers whether the team is achieving what it is trying to accomplish and articulates the picture of success. For example, if the team wants to reduce falls it should measure the number of falls.
Process measures - Processes which directly affect the outcome are measured to ensure that all key changes are being implemented to impact the outcome measure. For example, the delivery of timely prophylactic antibiotics to reduce surgical site infection.
Balancing measures - answer the question whether improvements in one part of the system were made at the expense of other processes in other parts of the system. For example, in a project to reduce the average length of stay for a group of patients, the team should also monitor the percent of readmissions within 30 days for the same group.
Information measures - collect general details relative to the intervention.