Beta Testing Opportunities for v2020 Risk Adjusted SAS QI and WinQI

The Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) is pleased to announce the plan for beta testing opportunities for the upcoming release of the v2020 SAS QI and WinQI software and supporting technical documentation in July 2020. The 2020 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 2020 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 up to five organizations to test SAS QI and/or WinQI.  

1. Opportunity for hospitals interested in participating in the v2020 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 v2020 software or considered for future improvements. 

Interested organizations must submit their request for participation by June 12, 2020 to QISupport@ahrq.hhs.gov. Beta testing is scheduled to start on June 23, 2020 and end on July 06, 2020. All submission requests must contain the subject line: AHRQ QI ICD-10 Testing Opportunities. 

2. The v2020 SAS QI and WinQI software will be released in July 2020. The release will include:

• Support for FY 2020 ICD-10-CM/PCS coding and risk adjustments in SAS QI and WinQI.
• Specification changes to reflect ICD-10-CM/PCS coding
• Programming changes
• Support for processing FY 2020 hospital discharge data
• Risk adjustments for PDI indicators

 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