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

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.

Electronic health record - public health (EHR-PH) system prototype for interoperability in 21st century healthcare systems.

Information exchange, enabled by computable interoperability, is the key to many of the initiatives underway including the development of Regional Health Information Exchanges, Regional Health Information Organizations, and the National Health Information Network. These initiatives must include public health as a full partner in the emerging transformation of our nation's healthcare system through the adoption and use of information technology. An electronic health record - public health (EHR-PH)system prototype was developed to demonstrate the feasibility of electronic data transfer from a health care provider, i.

Quality monitoring for early hearing detection and intervention programs to optimize performance.

The purpose of this chapter is to review the principles of quality monitoring for newborn screening programs at both a hospital and a public health level. The focus is on quality assurance in Early Hearing Detection and Intervention (EHDI). The chapter addresses the need for a systems approach to quality, beginning with the birth screening, moving to follow-up re-screening and on to confirmatory evaluations and life-long intervention and management for the infants identified with permanent hearing loss.