Answer ID 106   |    Published 06/26/2006 03:16 PM   |    Updated 02/16/2012 08:16 AM

The Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality's (AHRQ) Quality Indicators (QIs) are a set of quality indicators organized into four "modules," each of which measures quality associated with processes of care that occurred in an outpatient or an inpatient setting. All four modules rely solely on hospital inpatient administrative data:

1. Prevention Quality Indictors (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.
2. Inpatient Quality Indicators (IQIs) reflect quality of care inside hospitals and include:
   • Inpatient mortality for medical conditions.
   • Inpatient mortality for surgical procedures.
   • Utilization of procedures for which there are questions of overuse, underuse, or misuse.
   • Volume of procedures for which there is evidence that a higher volume of procedures maybe associated with lower mortality.
3. Patient Safety Indicators (PSIs) also reflect quality of care inside hospitals, but focus on potentially avoidable complications and iatrogenic events.
4. Pediatric Quality Indicators (PDIs) both reflect quality of care inside hospitals and identify potentially avoidable hospitalizations among children.

The detailed technical reports on the PQIs/IQIs and PSIs are available for download. These reports are results of projects conducted for AHRQ by the University of California at San Francisco (UCSF)-Stanford Evidence-based Practice Center (EPC). Go to: http://www.qualityindicators.ahrq.gov/modules/Default.aspx

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