March 10, 2025 Release Notes

Note: The 100 Top Hospitals 2024 peer group update will be implemented after the 2025 Breakthroughs take place.

This March release for QualityAdvisor includes the annual Peer Group updates. This year's updates are detailed below.

Top Performers

2024 Top Performers are now available in each of the following categories:

Top Performer Peers – Overall by Focused Population

Top Performer Peers – by Outcome

Top Performer Peers – Overall

Please see Current Top Performer Peer Groups in chapter 11 of the Methodologies User Guide for details.

Notes:

All 2024 Top Performers are calculated based on data from the January - December 2023 timeframe

The Top Performers by Focused Population based on the CMS Readmission and Mortality methodologies were calculated using the FY25 focused population definitions

The update includes 2024 Outpatient Top Decile and Top Quartile Performers

2024 Readmission Top Performer peers are based on HWR v4.0 2023 readmission methodology

All 2020 Top Performer Peers are retired

Birth Volume Peers

All groups in the Birth Volume peer group have been recalculated to be based on calendar year 2023 values. The methodology used to identify birth volumes for each facility matches the CDC Birth Volume denominator methodology.

Blood Utilization Peer Group

A new 2024 Blood Utilization & Data Optimization peer group has been added to the Premier Initiatives folder.

The 2020 peer group is retired

QUEST Peer Groups

• The QUEST 5.0 peer group located within the "QUEST" and "Premier Initiatives" folder is retired

Safety Net Peer Group

The Safety Net Hospitals Peer Group is updated. Each year, the new peer list completely replaces the previous year's list.

A safety net hospital is a type of medical center (in the United States) that, by legal obligation or mission, provides healthcare for all individuals regardless of their insurance status or ability to pay. The Safety Net Hospitals peer group at Premier, includes active members of the America’s Essential Hospitals (AEH) trade group that helps ensure access to care for America’s medically under-served and uninsured populations, and are published on the AEH Website.

Academic Peer Group Update

The Academic Peer Group is updated. Each year, the new peer list completely replaces the previous year's list.

Note: The qualifying definition for the Academic Peer Group stipulates that the peer group only includes facilities that are active QualityAdvisor members who are published on the Association of American Medical Colleges (AAMC) website, and that meet minimum comparative publishing standards to the comparative warehouse. Since the Academic Peer Group is updated only once every 12 months, it is possible that the list may or may not include facilities whose status against the qualifying definition has changed in the ensuing 12 months.

Urban, Academic, & Level I Trauma (UALOT) Peer Group

The UALOT Peer Group is updated. The UALOT peer group includes Academic hospitals that are also part of an urban community and have a Level I Trauma center.

The updated peer group list is based on the most recent Academic hospital list included in this March 2025 release, and the facility self-identified "Community Status" and "Trauma Level" data from the QA Facility Profile.

 

We have implemented a few enhancements to the ICU Outcomes Comparison Report. The enhancements are described below:

Row Header and Column Groupings Update

We have added the Set Up Analysis tab when selecting the report prompts, allowing you more flexibility to select the Row Header and Column Groupings of your choice. Initially, the report pre-selected MS-DRG as the default Row Header and no other attributes selections were possible. With this enhancement you can now choose a different attribute to use as the Row Header for your analyses.

• The Row Header is now a Required prompt. MS-DRG Family is selected as the default attribute, but can be changed

• All of the same row header and column grouping attributes that exist on other Standard Analyses are now available to select on both the Facility and Peer versions of the ICU Outcomes Comparison analyses. Please note that only one row header and one column grouping selection is allowed. You will need to remove the MS-DRG Family default selection to make a different attribute selection

• Standard Drilling Options and Page-by functionality are also available on the finished report

Additional Enhancements

• The graphs are now based on MS-DRG Family instead of MS-DRG. Additionally, all graphs will reflect MS-DRG Family regardless of what attribute is selected as the row header

• Graph titles and column headings that reflect results at the episode level are updated to include "per episode" in the title. For example:

Note: The "per episode" tag is also added where appropriate in Custom Query