v2019 Risk Adjusted SAS QI and WinQI Beta Testing Opportunities and Software Release Plan

Opportunity for organizations to Beta test v2019 Risk Adjusted SAS and WinQI

The Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) is pleased to announce the plan for beta testing opportunities and the upcoming release of the v2019 SAS QI and WinQI software and supporting technical documentation in July 2019. The software version number now reflects the fiscal year the software tools are released instead of an incremental version number. The 2019 SAS QI and WinQI software will enable organizations to apply the AHRQ Quality Indicators (QIs) to their own inpatient hospital administrative data to inform quality improvement efforts in acute care settings. 

This free SAS or Windows-based software can be used to calculate results for the AHRQ QIs, including: Prevention Quality Indicators (PQI), Inpatient Quality Indicators (IQI), Patient Safety Indicators (PSI), and Pediatric Quality Indicators (PDI). The 2019 SAS and WinQI software will be posted on the AHRQ QI website and notifications will be sent via the AHRQ QI list serv. 

As part of the software release process, AHRQ will facilitate beta testing opportunities for five organizations. 

1. Opportunity for hospitals interested in participating in the v2019 SAS QI and WinQI software beta testing activities: 

The beta testing activities will provide organizations an opportunity to use their ICD-10-CM/PCS hospital discharge data with the SAS QI and WinQI beta software to produce AHRQ QI observed and risk adjusted rates, and report any issues encountered during their testing. AHRQ will provide a timeline for receiving feedback on issues. The feedback received during the beta period will be fixed in the final production release of SAS QI and WinQI v2019 software or considered for future improvements.

Interested organizations must submit their request for participation by June 25, 2019 to QISupport@ahrq.hhs.gov. Beta testing is scheduled to start on June 28, 2019 and end on July 18, 2019. All submission requests must contain the subject line: AHRQ QI ICD-10 Testing Opportunities.

2. The v2019 SAS QI and WinQI software will be released in July 2019. The release will include:

• Support for FY 2019 ICD-10-CM/PCS coding and risk adjustments in SAS QI and WinQI.
• Specification changes to reflect ICD-10-CM/PCS coding
• Specification and programming changes    
• Support for processing FY 2019 hospital discharge data
• Retirement of 21 indicators (3, PQIs, 8 IQIs, 1 PSI and 9 PDIs). For details on the retirement go to https://www.qualityindicators.ahrq.gov/News/Retirement%20Notice_v2019_Indicators.pdf

Detailed information about all of the changes in the software will be included in the Release Notes and change logs that will be published when the software is released. 

If you have any questions or would like to talk with a member of the AHRQ QI team, please contact us at QISupport@ahrq.hhs.gov.

 Sincerely,

 The AHRQ QI Team