To support continued population health improvement across New Jersey, the Department of Health (NJDOH) 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 NJDOH in conjunction with the New Jersey Department of Human Services 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.

The QMC was established in 2018 to support NJDOH 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, NJDOH 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.

The QMC held its final meeting in the fall of 2024 to review and determine measure updates. NJDOH reviewed the QMC's recommendations when finalizing specifications for measurement year (MY) 5 of QIP-NJ and will denote any program modifications in the Databook as well as highlight through normal communication channels.

In an effort to promote transparency and ensure information is uniformly available to interested parties, NJDOH is posting all final QIP-NJ payments, by hospital. NJDOH will maintain and update this information each year. LINK