Inpatient Quality Indicators Overview

The Inpatient Quality Indicators (IQIs) are a set of measures that provide a perspective on hospital quality of care using hospital administrative data. These indicators reflect quality of care inside hospitals and include inpatient mortality for certain procedures and medical conditions; utilization of procedures for which there are questions of overuse, underuse, and misuse; and volume of procedures for which there is some evidence that a higher volume of procedures is associated with lower mortality.

The IQIs can be used to help hospitals identify potential problem areas that might need further study; provide the opportunity to assess quality of care inside the hospital using administrative data found in the typical discharge record; include mortality indicators for conditions or procedures for which mortality can vary from hospital to hospital; include utilization indicators for procedures for which utilization varies across hospitals or geographic areas; and, include volume indicators for procedures for which outcomes may be related to the volume of those procedures performed.