By Christopher Guadagnino, Ph.D.

Published May 1997

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Bill Cross is vice president of Health Knowledge Systems, Hospital Council of Western Pennsylvania. The Hospital Council is promoting a computerized clinical outcomes assessment system that has been accepted by the Joint Commission on Accreditation of Healthcare Organizations.

PND: What does the clinical performance measurement system do for hospitals?

BC: The Health Care Market Analysis System (HCMAS) is a software product developed by Weston Medical Data Systems in Massachusetts that utilizes billing data (UB 92) from hospitals and enables a user to quickly analyze all of their inpatient or outpatient data. A hospital can see how its market is changing, how it is doing vis-a-vis its competitors. They could look, for example, at the proportion of cardiac patients in each zip code that are going to each hospital over time, at mortality rates, length of stay, charges, individual physician data. HCMAS is one of the approved products for the Joint Commission’s outcomes measurement program; we have 57 Pennsylvania hospitals now using it, and about 170 clients in ten states.

PND: How does this system fit into the Joint Commission on Accreditation of Healthcare