The nonprofit Joint Commission announced the release of the Direct Data Submission Platform (DDSP), which will provide hospitals with near real-time quality metrics.

WHY IT MATTERS

The platform will make clinical quality language-based eCQMs available to providers in an execution environment where they can generate and use the results continuously.

The Joint Commission partnered with digital healthcare provider Apervita to provide the cloud platform underpinning this program by enabling providers to specify, develop, test, and execute eCQMs, as well as create and distribute applications that use them, in the cloud at scale.

Apervita is used by approximately 1,000 hospitals nationwide and helps health systems with streamlining, standardizing and auditing quality measures, operational metrics and care pathways.

The clinical quality language (CQL) standard for measures is used by The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services for 2019 eCQM reporting, and endorsed by HL7 International.

The language brings together the underlying logic of quality measurement, clinical pathways, clinical decision support and more — with DDSP, the Joint Commission can now use a single environment to specify, develop, test, and distribute CQL measures for use.

The nonprofit Joint Commission, which bills itself as the nation's oldest and largest standards-setting and accrediting body in health care, seeks to continuously improve health care for the public.

It works in collaboration with other stakeholders to evaluate health care organizations and inspire them to provide safe and more effective care at the highest quality and value.

The organization is making the DDSP and quality measure results continuously available, which should allow providers to measure and improve performance in near real-time without additional outside vendors.

ON THE RECORD

"What we've accomplished in the last two years with the Direct Data Submission platform has delivered ongoing value for our accredited hospitals," David Baker, EVP for the division of healthcare quality evaluation at The Joint Commission, said in a statement. "We're thrilled to build on that value with continuous quality insights that empower providers to make real-time performance improvements."

THE BIGGER TREND

According to a recent McKinsey report, leaders in the healthcare services and technology market will be large-scale platform players who act as “ecosystem integrators … integrating a range of different healthcare products and services.”

In response to this potential, venture capital and private equity investors alone deployed at least $60 billion into healthcare services from 2012 to 2017 — a figure that excludes the internal investments made by industry participants, such as payers and technology firms.

Nathan Eddy is a healthcare and technology freelancer based in Berlin.

Email the writer: nathaneddy@gmail.com

Twitter: @dropdeaded209 

Healthcare IT News is a HIMSS Media publication.