May 2, 2011
Klein, S., & McCarthy, D. (2011). Sentara Healthcare: Making Patient Safety an Enduring Organizational Value. The Commonweatlh Fund. http://www.commonwealthfund.org/Content/Publications/Case-Studies/2011/Mar/Sentara-Healthcare.aspx. Sentara Healthcare, an integrated health care delivery system serving parts of Virginia and North Carolina, has developed a systematic program to foster a culture of safety throughout its member hospitals, with the aim of reducing the […]
Posted in Journal Articles, READ Portal | Tagged with Benchmarking, Efficiency, Policy, Quality assessment, Quality control, Quality improvement, Safety | No Comments
April 7, 2011
“Canada spends more than $190 billion annually on healthcare, and healthcare expenditures are rising faster than overall economic growth. At the same time, there is an expectation for increasing demand for healthcare services among the aging baby-boom generation, a shift in focus to person-centred care, a renewed emphasis on patient safety, and ongoing public concerns about wait times and access. These trends, among others, are contributing to greater scrutiny of health system performance and growing concerns about the sustainability of Canada’s universal healthcare system. As a result, there is heightened pressure to identify ways to deliver high quality healthcare in a more cost-effective manner.
PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) was retained by the Canadian Health Services Research Foundation (CHSRF) to conduct a National Health Leadership Survey on Performance and Quality Improvement to:
Posted in READ Portal, Reports & Papers | Tagged with Benchmarking, Canada, Hospital administration, Indicators, Quality assessment, Quality improvement | No Comments
April 4, 2011
Today’s resource, The IHI Improvement Map, is an online tool from the Institute for Healthcare Improvement. It is designed to helps healthcare planners and administrators achieve the following goals:
- Make care safer
- Make patient care transitions smoother
- Lead improvement efforts effectively
- Reduce costs and increase quality
“The Improvement Map is an interactive, web-based tool designed to bring together the best knowledge available on the key process improvements that lead to exceptional patient care. It offers clear guidance through an often confusing health care landscape, helping hospitals set change agendas, establish priorities, organize work, and optimize resources.”
Posted in Multimedia, READ Portal | Tagged with Benchmarking, Efficiency, Implementation process, Quality control, Quality improvement | No Comments
March 22, 2011
“In Chapter 1 we understand why health information should be made available directly to patients and why electronic information is the best means of information sharing. A few important aspects related to these issues are laid down: trustworthiness and comprehensibility. Information should be available to patients in all languages so that when faced with such information, all patients can have the opportunity to understand it with the maximum level of responsibility and data security.
Moreover, another feature of modern technologies is technical interoperability, which should be seen as a future ‘must do’ so that information becomes not only mobile but accessible. In light of this, e-health should bring with it the simplification of administrative procedures and should be a source of education and evaluation for the medical profession, facilitating the patient-doctor relationship.
Chapter 2 tries to answer just that, explaining why we are so sure that e-health is a tool that empowers citizens. It will deliver key services such as rapid access to medical records, making it possible that a chronic disease could even be remotely monitored or that 5 million yearly prescription errors could be avoided. Thus, it improves the management of healthcare and what is essential to remember is that we know it works. A similar program has already been implemented in Sweden and people there could tangibly feel that it delivered on its promises. In addition, Malta, Germany, Slovenia and Slovakia have developed ID cards where health and illness information is accessibly stored.
Chapter 3 then explains two aspects about ICT technologies: that projects such as the Virtual Physiological Human were a success and that in spite of being an advanced technological tool e-health is still in its infancy and has even greater potential for innovation. Hence, this chapter explains in specific terms what e-health does and most importantly what it could do in practice.
Last but not least, Chapter 4 puts the topic into perspective, telling of present and future challenges that affect the medical profession and overall, the EU and its patients. The two articles both recognize that under the pressure of an ageing population phenomenon, healthcare services need the digitisation that could be brought by e-health investments. In this sense, the main points voiced refer to training professionals in the best way possible, facilitating for them both hardware and software material.”
Posted in READ Portal, Reports & Papers | Tagged with Benchmarking, e-health, Efficiency, Forecasting, Health technology, Information technology, Medical records, Patient-centered care, Technology | No Comments
March 21, 2011
This report is a user‟s guide for defining, measuring, and improving the performance of health service delivery organizations. We define six core performance domains: quality, efficiency, utilization, access, learning, and sustainability and provide a compendium of metrics that have been used to measure organizational performance in each of these six domains. The compendium, which includes 116 distinct categories of metrics, is based on a detailed literature review of peer-reviewed empirical studies of health care organizational performance in World Bank client countries. We include a bibliography of studies that have used these measures.
Based on our reading of the literature, we define seven major strategy areas potentially useful for improving performance among health care organizations: 1) standards and guidelines, 2) organizational design, 3) education and training, 4) process improvement and technology and tool development, 5) incentives, 6) organizational culture, and 7) leadership and management. We provide illustrations of facility-level interventions within each of the strategy areas and highlight the conditions under which certain strategies may be more effective than others. We propose that the choice of strategy targeted at organizational level to improve performance should be informed by the identified root causes of the problem, the implementation capabilities of the organization, and the environmental conditions faced by the organization.
Measuring and improving organizational performance is complex because organizations are diverse and dynamic. Users of this guide should take away a toolkit of concepts and methods that can help them identify which questions to ask and how to answer them in the context of defining, measuring, and improving performance of health service delivery organizations. Having this broad set of tools with which to understand and enhance organizational performance can contribute to improving health service delivery and ultimately health outcomes.
Posted in READ Portal, Reports & Papers | Tagged with Benchmarking, Efficiency, Indicators, Policy, Quality improvement, Quality of care | No Comments
March 15, 2011
This article reviews how health care management can stop the leakage of personal health information. The author advocates engaging in and being aware of the following five areas:
- Find and Remove “Shadow Systems”;
Eliminate user recreations of existing hospital data and stop future duplications.
- Include Only Required Information in Reports;
Eliminate all unnecessary personal information in reports.
- Find and Digitally Shred Unneeded Information;
Dispose of outdated reports containing personal information.
- The Human Element;
Ensure all staff are properly trained in secure data handling.
- Authorized Access.
Manage access to secure and confidential data.
By engaging in these practices health care management can over many of the potential risks associated with the handling of private personal information.
Posted in Journal Articles, READ Portal | Tagged with Benchmarking, Decision making, Medical records, Policy | No Comments
March 4, 2011
Emergency admissions to hospital are costly to the NHS and also cause disruption to planned health care. Considerable efforts have been made within the health service to reduce emergency admissions, but few primary care trusts have been successful, with some primary care trusts recording an increase.
In order to successfully reduce avoidable emergency admissions, we need to fully understand which interventions are the most effective. The King’s Fund commissioned this review of research evidence to establish which interventions work in avoiding emergency or unplanned hospital admissions.
This paper aims to address the following questions:
- What interventions work in reducing avoidable admissions?
- Who is at risk, and how do we identify them?
- Which admissions are potentially avoidable?
Which interventions work in:
- primary care
- social care
- emergency care
- discharge from hospital.
The paper concludes that policy-makers, providers and commissioners can introduce a number of changes that have proved to be effective in reducing admissions and includes recommendations for all of these groups, emphasising the importance of using evidence-based interventions.
Posted in READ Portal, Reports & Papers | Tagged with Benchmarking, Evidence-based, Indicators, Policy, Quality assessment, Quality control, Quality improvement | No Comments
March 3, 2011
Memorial Hermann Memorial City Medical Center (Memorial City) achieved superior readmission rates in two of the three clinical areas reported to the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS). Its readmission rate for patients with acute myocardial infarction (AMI) and pneumonia surpassed the best 10 percent of hospitals in the country for the selection period. Its readmission rate for heart failure was not as strong, outperforming the national average only by a narrow margin.
Specifically, the following efforts and patient-focused interventions, which were initiated by the system and implemented at the hospital, seem to contribute to Memorial City’s low readmission rates:
Organizational efforts
- Emphasis on quality, with a clear leadership vision that is communicated to all clinical staff and backed up by the commitment of needed resources. The health system aims to “do the right thing the first time.”
- Concurrent review of performance on core measures during a patient’s stay to monitor achievement of goals, with findings reported to physicians.
- Extensive employee training related to the system’s top priorities to make sure everyone is “rowing in the right direction.”
Posted in READ Portal, Reports & Papers | Tagged with Benchmarking, Evidence-based, Indicators, Patient-centered care, Quality of care | No Comments
February 22, 2011
In response to growing interest from the hospital community in better understanding and improving the experience of patients and their families during hospitalization, the Institute for Healthcare Improvement (IHI) conducted an in-depth review of the research, studied exemplar organizations, and interviewed experts in the field. Our aim was to identify the primary and secondary drivers of exceptional patient and family inpatient hospital experience (defined as care that is patient centered, safe, effective, timely, efficient, and equitable), as measured by the Hospital Consumer Assessment of Healthcare Providers and Systems (HCAHPS) survey’s “willingness to recommend” the hospital.
Posted in READ Portal, Reports & Papers | Tagged with Benchmarking, Hospitals, Indicators, Patient satisfaction, Quality assessment, Quality improvement | 1 Comment
February 10, 2011
Outsourcing of non-core, non-clinical support services is a solution for many organizations. Most often, this is put into action one service provider at a time. In 2007, however, York Central Hospital (YCH) implemented Sodexo’s integrated Comprehensive Service Solutions (CSS) for all its support service functions. In doing so, YCH achieved significant improvements in patient and staff satisfaction rates, substantial cost savings through improved operational efficiency from process improvements and leveraging technology investments, and increased retail food revenue.
Posted in Journal Articles, READ Portal | Tagged with Benchmarking, Canada, Efficiency, Health care reform, Indicators, Program evaluation | No Comments
