This volume, developed by the Observatory together with OECD, provides an overall conceptual framework for understanding and applying strategies aimed at improving quality of care. Crucially, it summarizes available evidence on different quality strategies and provides recommendations for their implementation. This book is intended to help policy-makers to understand concepts of quality and to support them to evaluate single strategies and combinations of strategies.

The Health Care Compliance Professional's Manual gives you all the tools you need to plan and execute a customized compliance program that meets federal standards. It walks you through the entire process, start to finish, showing you how to draft compliance policies, build a strong compliance infrastructure in your organization, document your efforts, apply self-assessment techniques, create an effective education program, pinpoint areas of risk, conduct internal probes and much more. The Health Care Compliance Professional's Manual is used by the Health Care Compliance Association (HCCA) as the basic text for its Compliance Academy - the program that prepares compliance professionals for the CHC (Certificate in Healthcare Compliance) certification exam. The Health Care Compliance Professional's Manual will help you to: Use OIG publications and Federal Sentencing Guidelines to help plan and execute a customized compliance strategy that meets tough federal standards Perform risk assessment to pinpoint areas within your company that pose compliance and operational risks Draft compliance policies that form the foundation for a strong compliance program Build a strong infrastructure for compliance to work, including hiring the right personnel Create an effective education and training program that instills in employees the value of legal compliance Conduct internal probes that uncover legal violations before the federal government does - and mitigate possible penalties Stay up-to-date on all the latest legal and regulatory requirements affecting your facility, including HIPAA, EMTALA, fraud and abuse reimbursement, privacy, security, patient safety and much more! Packed with tools to make your job easier, The Health Care Compliance Professional's Manual will provide: Practical coverage of federal and state laws governing your facility Document efforts and apply self assessment techniques Insight into helpful federal standards on effective compliance programs Step-by-step guidance on implementing a sound compliance program Time-saving sample compliance policies, forms, checklists, and chart The Health Care Compliance Professional's Manual will protect your company if violations do occur: Learn how to apply auditing, monitoring, and self-assessment techniques Discover how to successfully follow the OIG's voluntary disclosure program to resolve overpayment problems and avoid exclusion from Medicare Find out how to enter into a corporate integrity agreement to settle with the federal government and mitigate FCA-related penalties Document your compliance efforts so you leave a protective paper trail that shields you from liability And much more

This User’s Guide is intended to support the design, implementation, analysis, interpretation, and quality evaluation of registries created to increase understanding of patient outcomes. For the purposes of this guide, a patient registry is an organized system that uses observational study methods to collect uniform data (clinical and other) to evaluate specified outcomes for a population defined by a particular disease, condition, or exposure, and that serves one or more predetermined scientific, clinical, or policy purposes. A registry database is a file (or files) derived from the registry. Although registries can serve many purposes, this guide focuses on registries created for one or more of the following purposes: to describe the natural history of disease, to determine clinical effectiveness or cost-effectiveness of health care products and services, to measure or monitor safety and harm, and/or to measure quality of care. Registries are classified according to how their populations are defined. For example, product registries include patients who have been exposed to biopharmaceutical products or medical devices. Health services registries consist of patients who have had a common procedure, clinical encounter, or hospitalization. Disease or condition registries are defined by patients having the same diagnosis, such as cystic fibrosis or heart failure. The User’s Guide was created by researchers affiliated with AHRQ’s Effective Health Care Program, particularly those who participated in AHRQ’s DEcIDE (Developing Evidence to Inform Decisions About Effectiveness) program. Chapters were subject to multiple internal and external independent reviews.