QuitWorks News

The Joint Commission is inviting public comment on a proposed set of 8 candidate measures that focus on assessing and treating tobacco, alcohol and other drug use and dependence in the hospital setting.  This measure set is intended to enhance and replace the current National Hospital Quality Measures for Adult Smoking Cessation Advice/Counseling in the acute myocardial infarction (AMI-4), heart failure (HF-4) and pneumonia (PN-4) measure sets. 

The work of a Technical Advisory Panel resulted in this set of measures that expands and broadens the scope of the current measure set population to all applicable patients who use tobacco and/or who use and are dependent on alcohol and other drugs.

The public comment period opens September 1, 2009 and will close at midnight on September 30, 2009.  If you would like to comment on these measures, please complete this survey.

If your hospital would be interested in participating in the pilot test for this measure set, pertinent information can be provided in a section at the conclusion of the public comment survey and Joint Commission staff will contact you to explore your interest further.  The pilot test will run for approximately 6 months during which hospitals will collect data on the candidate measures.  As a routine part of the pilot test, a subset of hospitals will be visited by Joint Commission staff to assess reliability of the data and hold focus group discussions.

The proposed regulations can be found here.