The Provider Initiative Project (PIP) allows participating long-term care facilities to provide resident assessment information from the MDS (Version 2.0) to the Center for Health Systems Research and Analysis (CHSRA), electronically via a secure internet connection. CHSRA utilizes this information to provide participating facilities discretionary access to a variety of facility level, resident level and Quality Indicator/Quality Measure trending reports electronically via the secure internet. These reports were originally based on the nursing home Quality Indicators developed by CHSRA as part of the National Multi-State Nursing Home Case-Mix and Quality Demonstration project under a contract with the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services (formerly the Health Care Financing Administration). The new reports available to PIP members are based on Quality Indicator/Quality Measures (QI/QMs) which are a highbred of the original CHSRA QIs and CMS' Quality Measures. Detailed information about these QI/QMs and the new reports can be found in the Quality Center link on the ePIP website. The reports furnish comparative QI/QM information for participating facilities (to various comparison groups) on individual QI/QMs at the facility level and at the individual resident level (see sample reports ). These reports are designed to assist participating facilities in ongoing potential problem identification and internal quality improvement activities.

To assist facilities with their ongoing quality improvement efforts, CHSRA provides the following products/services:

1. Access to QI/QM reports via a secure internet connection.
2. Comprehensive information explaining in detail how to use the QI/QM reports in a quality improvement model, including:
   • An explanation of the QI/QMs and risk factors
   • The definition of each QI/QM
   • Differences between original CHSRA QIs and QI/QMs
   • How to interpret each of the facility and resident level reports
   • A general protocol that provides detailed instructions on how to use the QIs to guide the review of particular care areas in a facility
3. Specific QI Guides that provide more detailed instructions on reviewing individual care areas covered by the QIs.