Virginia Health Quality Center

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The Virginia Health Quality Center (VHQC) is an independent, not-for-profit corporation that primarily focuses on health care quality assessment services. Their role is to assess the needs, implement improvements, and evaluate results as it relates to how medical care is delivered by health care providers within a targeted geographic area. The VHQC's clients include federal and state agencies, health care providers, managed care organizations, and commercial health insurers in Virginia and throughout the United States.

As the Medicare quality improvement organization for Virginia, they work under the guidance of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), an agency of the United States Department of Health and Human Services.

Description

Established in 1984, the VHQC is a 501(c)(3) not-for-profit corporation with clients in both the public and private sectors. The VHQC has more than 60 employees, including physicians, nurses, biostatisticians, health educators and public relations professionals. It is the recipient of the 2002 United States Senate Productivity and Quality Award Plaque for Progress in Performance Excellence, the highest level award bestowed on an organization in Virginia during 2002.

The VHQC serves as the federally designated quality improvement organization for Virginia, and is one of the many Quality improvement organizations (QIOs) throughout the nation. The VHQC has held the CMS contract to provide quality improvement and Medicare beneficiary outreach services in Virginia since 1984. The VHQC partners with Virginia's health care community to improve patient care for Virginia's 913,886 Medicare beneficiaries in all health care settings, including hospitals, physician offices, nursing homes and home health agencies. The VHQC serves as an advocate for Virginia's Medicare beneficiaries, providing education and handling complaints.

The VHQC provides quality improvement assistance to Virginia's acute care hospitals and more than 700 physicians in a number of clinical topics such as heart failure, pneumonia, stroke, breast cancer and diabetes. In addition, the VHQC has implemented several local projects that take its quality improvement techniques into new arenas such as home health, mammography for at-risk populations and long-term care facilities.

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