What is the Minnesota Community Measures Registry?
“You can’t improve what you don’t measure.” That’s the main theme behind The Minnesota Community Measures (MNCM) Registry. MNCM is a self-described non-profit organization launched in 2002 that “creates and refines measures, and collects and reports healthcare data used to drive improvement in healthcare.”
MNCM began collecting data in 2002 and now has more than 1,6040 participating clinics throughout the state. However, in 2008, the state of Minnesota’s Health Reform Law requires the Minnesota Department of Health (MDH) to “establish a standard set of quality measures for health care providers across the state.” Therefore, MDH created the Minnesota Statewide Quality Reporting and Measurement System (SQRMS) and as of January 1, 2010, “all hospitals and clinics are required to collect and report annually on a uniform set of measures.” Since 2011, MNCM has been contracted by MDH to help collect as assist with these measurement requirements.
The MNCM has a handful of measures it tracks, with two goals in mind: alignment and health equity. These mean that rather than the quantity of measures tracked, it’s the quality of the measures that counts. Therefore, MNCM publicly reports on more than 70 cost, quality, and patient experience measures, with more in the works.
MNCM also tracks Patient-Reported Outcome Measures (PROMs) in five different areas including Asthma; Depression; Patient Experience; Spine Surgery; and Total Knee Replacement. Many of these measures have been endorsed by the National Quality Forum (NQF). Click here to see all of the approved measures CMNC is reporting on in 2017.
To emphasize the importance of data transparency, MNCM has a consumer-facing website, MNHealthScores.org. This site lets patients compare ratings for the organization in four areas: Clinic Quality and Patient Experience; Medical Group Quality and Total Cost; Hospital Quality and Patient Experience; and Cost of Services and Procedures.
Patient-review sites are of growing importance to the healthcare consumer, and these rating sites are not to be taken lightly. The study referenced in this blog found that Yelp reviews and scores are consistent with similar assessments conducted by Medicare, making Yelp and alike sites, “good composite measures of hospital quality.”
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