New pneumonia quality measures unveiled

WASHINGTON, March 14 (UPI) -- A key U.S. organization this week released new standards for hospital pneumonia mortality rates.

The National Quality Forum, a body of more than 350 healthcare stakeholder groups, released two pneumonia performance measures as the last part of a project that has developed 71 total voluntary standards for hospital care.

Pneumonia was the primary reason for nearly 1.4 million hospitalizations and more than 63,000 deaths were attributed to the disease in 2003.

The two new measures are inpatient pneumonia mortality and 30-day mortality. To complement the measures, the forum also endorsed mortality measure maintenance, mortality measure implementation and harmonization of candidate consensus standards.