WASHINGTON, D.C. (November 21, 2017)—AARP announced today that Pharmacy Quality Alliance (PQA) and Tufts Medical Center are this year's AARP Quality Measures Innovation Grant award winners. They will each receive a grant of $150,000 and will have access to OptumLabs' unique data assets to develop innovative quality health measures that address important gaps in diabetes and cancer care.
AARP, in collaboration with OptumLabs, began the Quality Measures Innovation Grant program in 2016 to sponsor projects aimed at developing and/or testing novel health quality measures to improve patient care. Working together with the National Quality Forum (NQF) Measure Incubator, AARP's grant will support efforts to improve the lives of older Americans.
About this year's award winners:
Pharmacy Quality Alliance—Diabetes Measure
PQA, in collaboration with the University of Maryland, proposed a patient safety and outcome measure for treating people with diabetes. They propose to measure the frequency of hospital and/or emergency room visits due to misuse of anti-hyperglycemic medications among patients with diabetes. This is an important measure for older adults and for AARP because of the high prevalence of diabetes among mid-life and older adults; and because hypoglycemia (or low-blood sugar) is a major source of adverse drug events among diabetes patients.
Tufts Medical Center—Cancer Measure
Tufts Medical Center, in collaboration with Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center and Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, proposed a patient safety measure for treating cancer patients. This measure aims to reduce medical errors and care-related injuries among cancer patients, particularly high-risk and vulnerable people. The proposal will identify a group of "trigger" events (e.g., use of an antidote medication, abnormal lab or medical results, changes in the level of care) in the electronic medical record that indicate potential adverse events or medical errors.
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