Quality Improvement Program -
New Jersey (QIP-NJ)

Overview

To support continued population health improvement across New Jersey, the Department of Health (DOH) developed and implemented a hospital performance initiative called the Quality Improvement Program - New Jersey (QIP-NJ), which officially launched on July 1, 2021, as approved by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. QIP-NJ is envisioned to be a multi-year initiative with participating hospitals improving performance year-over-year until their individual targets align with the statewide goal for each measure. QIP-NJ is administered by DOH in conjunction with the Department of Human Services (DHS) as a Medicaid pay-for-performance initiative and is open to all acute care hospitals in the state

The focus of the program is to advance statewide quality improvements in maternal health and behavioral health (BH). All acute care hospitals in New Jersey are eligible for QIP-NJ performance payments. Hospitals may earn QIP-NJ incentive payments through the achievement of performance targets on state-selected quality measures that demonstrate:

• improvements in maternal care processes
• reductions in maternal morbidity
• improvements in connections to BH services, and
• reductions in potentially preventable utilization for the BH population.

QIP-NJ further advances and supports statewide quality improvements in maternal health and BH, in alignment with State leadership, i.e., New Jersey First Lady Tammy Murphy's Nurture NJ Maternal and Infant Health Plan, and the broader goals of the Murphy Administration and its focus on BH. QIP-NJ also provides ample opportunities for technical assistance and robust Learning Collaboratives for hospitals to support them in achieving QIP-NJ goals. For more information regarding QIP-NJ, please review the information contained on the Documents & Resources webpage.

Quality Measures Committee (QMC)

The Quality Measures Committee (QMC) was established in 2018 to support DOH in the policy design and implementation of QIP-NJ. The QMC initially consisted of sixteen members across the health care industry, including state-based experts, subject matter experts in the areas of maternal health and behavioral health (BH), quality improvement and measurement experts in the industry, and hospital and hospital system representatives. In developing QIP-NJ in terms of program design, QMC members met at least quarterly to determine the areas of focus, measure inclusion and specifications, and attribution methodology. QMC members were also asked to review measure policies and specifications within the draft and final versions of the Measurement Specifications & Submission Guidelines (also known as the Databook).

In 2021, upon reviewing the current QIP-NJ QMC membership, DOH employed a data-driven approach to identify additional individuals from several NJ acute care hospitals and/or hospital systems to join the QMC by taking into consideration various data points and demographic factors including, but not limited to, region, size, type of organization, volume of services (emergency department (ED), outpatient BH, births, etc.), with the ultimate goal being to ensure a greater diversity of representation from numerous perspectives.

Going forward, the QMC will continue to meet on an annual basis to assess and review measure steward updates and Hospital Technical Contact suggested updates, as well as to provide recommendations to DOH on the inclusion and updates of QIP-NJ measures. DOH will take the QMC's recommendations into consideration as it works to finalize future years of QIP-NJ and will denote any program modifications in the Databook as well as highlight through normal communication channels.

QIP-NJ Hospital Participation

There are 57 NJ acute care hospitals participating in MY4 of QIP-NJ, which runs from January 1, 2024, through December 31, 2024. The following chart provides more detailed information on the number of NJ acute care hospitals participating in MY4 in either one or both measure sets of QIP-NJ, which focus on behavioral health and maternal health:

QIP-NJ Payments

In an effort to promote transparency and ensure information is uniformly available to interested parties, DOH is posting all final QIP-NJ payments, broken down by hospital. DOH will maintain and update this information on an ongoing basis. LINK