HCUP Methods Series

The Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) Quality Indicators (QIs) were applied to the HCUP hospital discharge data for several measures in this report. The AHRQ QIs, originally developed by AHRQ staff, recently have been revised and improved under contract with AHRQ. The QIs are measures of quality associated with processes of care that occurred in an outpatient or an inpatient setting. The QIs rely solely on hospital inpatient administrative data and, for this reason, are screens for examining quality that may indicate the need for more in-depth studies. The AHRQ QIs include three sets of measures: • Prevention Quality Indicators (PQIs)—or ambulatory care sensitive conditions— identify hospital admissions that evidence suggests could have been avoided, at least in part, through high-quality outpatient care (AHRQ, 2004). • Inpatient Quality Indicators (IQIs) reflect quality of care inside hospitals and include measures of utilization of procedures for which there are questions of overuse, underuse, or misuse (AHRQ, 2004). • Patient Safety Indicators (PSIs) reflect quality of care inside hospitals, by focusing on surgical complications and other iatrogenic events (AHRQ, 2004)