Measuring Early Hearing Detection and Intervention (EHDI) Quality across the Continuum of Care

Abstract

Improving quality measurement while reducing costs helps public health programs identify and better support critical aspects of the care and services delivered to the patients they serve. This is true for state-based early hearing detection and intervention (EHDI) programs as they strive to develop robust clinical quality measures to help track the quality of hearing health services provided during the EHDI processes. Leveraging today's electronic health records and public health surveillance system functionalities, state reporting requirements facilitate and yield efficient collection and analysis of data for quality measurement. In this study, we tested three EHDI quality measures endorsed by the National Quality Forum using a retrospective sample of more than 1,100,000 newborns from 3 states using electronic health data available in the state EHDI Information Systems (EHDI-IS). The results of the analysis reported herein from a large multi-state cohort provide a "real life" benchmark for future quality improvement projects and of where EHDI stands today. Reflecting on these findings, suggestions are posed for enhancing the EHDI quality measures in future updates.