Community-acquired pneumonia: defining quality care.

Background: Community-acquired pneumonia (CAP) is one of 3 initial conditions for which the Joint Commission for Accreditation of Healthcare Organizations and the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services have defined quality measures. Eight "core measures" of pneumonia care have been targeted for reporting by U.S. hospitals to facilitate performance monitoring.

Methods: A review of the literature supporting the core measures was performed.

Results: Indicators encouraging influenza vaccination and appropriate antibiotic selection had the most robust evidence. Rapid delivery of antibiotics also showed significant reduction in mortality, though the actual timing (4 versus 8 hours) varied between studies. Other measures, such as performance of blood cultures, pneumococcal vaccination, smoking cessation, and oxygenation assessment, demonstrated less obvious clinical benefit.

Conclusions: There is inherent value in setting standards of care for high-impact conditions such as CAP, but these standards should be chosen on the basis of high-quality research. Public reporting of the current measures is problematic, as it implies they represent best practices for CAP despite relatively weak evidence.