TEIC Overview
       
Quality
 
   
 

TEIC

The Toward Excellence in Care (TEIC) program provides acute care hospitals with quality improvement services through data collection and analysis of clinical processes and outcomes. TEIC customers include the majority of Connecticut hospitals as well as half of the acute care hospitals in Rhode Island.

TEIC provides hospitals with services and tools to assist them in satisfying the increasing quality improvement reporting and benchmarking obligations being imposed by regulatory and accrediting bodies. TEIC utilizes standardized methodologies, allowing for quality evaluation and comparison and statewide performance benchmarks. In addition, TEIC is a Joint Commission approved performance measurement system and authorized CMS data submission vendor and submits all required performance improvement data for participating hospitals.

The TEIC staff use their knowledge of the hospital operational and regulatory environment to meet evolving hospital needs and to advocate with Joint Commission and CMS on hospitals' behalf.  TEIC's technical staff have a wide range of experience in data collection and analysis applications, including Joint Commission's Core Measures program, outcome measures and Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services' (CMS) data submission requirements. Hospitals are kept current with changing Joint Commission and CMS requirements through regular TEIC educational and communication forums, such as monthly conference calls and TEIC User Group meetings.

To evaluate the quality of care provided, hospitals review both patient outcomes and clinical processes through data analysis. This analysis is performed by defining discrete data points and applying statistical methodology to produce a measure of performance. TEIC provides hospitals with standardized definitions and methodology for more than 40 outcome and process measures. The use of standardized definitions and methodology enables TEIC to create benchmarks, allowing hospitals to compare their performance with other TEIC hospitals and hospitals nationwide.

For more information, please contact Julie Petrellis, Director, Quality Improvement, at (203) 294-7319 or petrellis@chime.org.