McKesson Health Solutions, an independent company, has made significant changes to the InterQual Level of Care Criteria for 2015.

In July 2015, the Care Management and Coordination department at Independence will begin using the 2015 InterQual Level of Care criteria for review of acute inpatient, acute rehabilitation, skilled nursing facility, and long-term acute care admissions. We will also move to the 2015 home care guidelines. Changes include:

• InterQual Acute Adult Level of Care criteria:
  New and enhanced in the 2015 InterQual release are criteria to address comorbid conditions on admission for patients with Heart Failure and COPD. The new criteria allow for appropriate admission of medically complex patients with comorbid conditions who may not otherwise meet criteria for the primary condition alone. In addition:
       - A new Syncope subset was added to the InterQual Acute Adult Level of Care criteria.
       - The requirement for left v. right Heart Failure was removed from the Heart Failure subset.
       - Updates to improve workflow and consistency were made to the infection criteria.
       - New criteria were added for Dengue fever, Typhoid, and Ebola.
• InterQual Acute Pediatric criteria: Updates include nursery and bronchiolitis enhancements. The infection criteria were updated to help improve workflow and consistency, and new criteria were added for Dengue fever, Typhoid, and Ebola.
• InterQual Post-Acute Care criteria: Updates were made to the Subacute/Skilled Nursing Facility, Long Term Acute Care, and Acute Rehabilitation products.