OCTOBER 2023LIFE SCIENCES REVIEW9Measuring clinical quality will, of course, need to be specific to the specialty use case, but many metrics can be generalized to multiple specialties. A consensus for clinical quality metrics will need to be developed at a national level in conjunction with the specialty groups. Continuously monitoring quality metrics will help standardize high quality care across the country and allow peers to compare themselves to one other. It will also help drive the conversation towards making reimbursement for telemedicine services a permanent part of healthcare post-pandemic. determine if there were any preventable causes of these deaths. Through a systematic review, we were able to determine risk factors for referrals to the Emergency Departments, as well as identify those patients who may deteriorate to an ICU admission, airway intervention or death. Measuring clinical quality has been a standard process for in-person care for many years, but yet, has not been a major component of telemedicine-based care. National quality metrics for telemedicine were initially created by the National Quality Forum in 2017 to measure access, financial impact, effectiveness, and patient experience. Unfortunately, these metrics were not built to measure clinical quality of care. To remedy this, at the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, we developed metrics to measure overall quality of care for our Virtual Urgent Care program. The metrics included post-VUC visit ED bounce back rate, death rate within 30 days, and post-VUC ED visit with admission rate, in addition to previously tracked metrics including antibiotic usage rate in upper respiratory infections, and ED referral rates. These metrics were tracked using a dashboard for continuous quality assurance and chart review.Measuring clinical quality has been a standard process for in-person care for many years, but yet, has not been a major component of telemedicine-based care
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