To provide and assist our member hospitals with resource effective state and national data, data delivery & decision making systems, and reports to improve their clinical quality, operational efficiency, and financial stability.

• Enhance and maintain the Collaborative Approach to Resource Effectiveness Program (CARE Program), which is comprised of CARE2 and CARE Core
• Provide data services to the Partnership for Health and Accountability (PHA)
• Provide technical assistance, custom statistical analysis, and project implementation
• Provide research support, design and methodology to GHA members
• Conduct training and site visits to the members for various data management tools and initiatives such as CMS, JCAHO ORYX, and AHA
• Serve as liaison to national agencies regarding data requirements such as CMS, AHRQ/HCUP, JCAHO and AHA

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The CARE program contains two products for analyzing the quality of health care that were designed and built by programmers at Social and Scientific Systems (SSS) and continually improved upon by the input from numerous hospital participants.

CARE2 is an online product focused on analyzing and improving outcomes that contains fourteen basic performance indicators built from hospital discharge data. Many hospitals in the United States use UB92 formats to record billing data. These databases contain volumes of useful information that can help facilities identify strengths and weaknesses in their health care quality. CARE2 also contains Advanced General Purposes Tables which allow for tremendous flexibility when examining hospital performance.

For more information, please visit CARE2.

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CARE Core evaluates the quality of care and a hospital’s compliance with evidence-based processes for internal improvement purposes and JCAHO submissions. It uses the CART tool as the front-end data collection tool and provides one-time data collection that fulfills CMS, Hospital Quality Alliance, Annual Payment Update, and State requirements.

For more information, please visit CARE Core.

The CARE Program wants to ensure that all of your analysis needs are met. We seek to deliver the best products in a rigorous fashion and we strive to support those products with the best people providing the best service.

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The hospitals' CARE Program began in 1992 with a grant from the Robert Woodruff Foundation in response to member needs for comparative data for benchmarking and quality improvement. Since that time, hundreds of volunteers have devoted thousands of hours to developing the performance assessment indicators and report formats that are currently used in the CARE program.

In 1995, CARE partnered with the Georgia Medical Care Foundation and the Medical Association of Georgia to form Collaborative Quality Improvement Partnerships (CQIP). The purpose of CQIP was to conduct patient focused studies in order to identify potential areas for improvement.

In 1996, GHA partnered with the Joint Commission for Accreditation of Healthcare Organizations in the Orion-Georgia program. The goal of Orion-Georgia was to develop and test a model that had the potential to modify and refine the current accreditation survey process. One component of the Orion partnership incorporated the use of performance data from patient centered studies to improve performance. In 1997, CQIP was expanded to CQIP Plus to acknowledge the addition of JCAHO.

In 1997, JCAHO launched the ORYX initiative with the goal to integrate outcomes and other performance measurement data into the accreditation process. Georgia and the CARE program were approved by JCAHO to be one of 5 states to pilot test a Performance Measurement System for its ORYX Initiative. Intended to be inexpensive and flexible, ORYX was a new approach to accrediting hospitals. In this way, the initiative increased the focus on quality in the health care setting. For more information on ORYX, you may contact the Joint Commission directly at: (630) 792-5085 or via email at oryx@jcaho.org

In 2000, CARE entered another study with JCAHO in Orion Georgia II (2000-2001). As a performance measurement system, CARE will be working with its in-state and out-of-state members to incorporate and test data collection of the core measure indicators. CARE is proud to serve more than 80 facilities in fulfilling their JCAHO requirements.

Since CARE's inception, it has sponsored numerous educational programs, through in-person meetings, TELNETS, newsletters, and others, and has assembled an extensive resource center of quality improvement materials

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For Web and Technical assistance contact Scobb@gha.org