SAGE KIDS: Measuring Quality Pediatric Care

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): The goal of this project is to begin the development of a pediatric quality measurement system, SAGE-Kids, which will allow customers to generate valid, clinically relevant indicators for use in measuring and improving quality of care for pediatric patients. The product will be built to enhance and expand upon the existing ProfSoft product suite, which provides health plans innovative episode of care-based tools that go beyond the somewhat limited administrative data-based measures in use at many health plans. Within this grant, we will develop a set of test indicators for inclusion in the SAGE-Kids system using a combination of literature review and clinical input. These indicators will be piloted using data from a diverse group of health plans and other managed care entities to assess whether health plan data is robust enough to generate stable estimates of each indicator. Finally, we will develop a set of indicator reports, designed for a health plan's internal and external customers that will maximize the usefulness of SAGE-Kids data in promoting quality improvement and in marketing. At the end of this phase one grant we will have developed a validated prototype system that can be broadly piloted, tested, and refined in future research activities.