Comments on: Employers’ Opportunity to Improve Health Care Results http://dwaynenesmith.com/blog/archives/2008/07/employers-opportunity-to-improve-health-care-results/ Tue, 22 Jul 2008 16:08:25 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.3.1 By: Scott Hodson http://dwaynenesmith.com/blog/archives/2008/07/employers-opportunity-to-improve-health-care-results/comment-page-1/#comment-17 Scott Hodson Tue, 22 Jul 2008 16:08:25 +0000 http://dwaynenesmith.com/?p=119#comment-17 I agree. Many American health systems are significantly underinvested in quality management Infrastructure, Process, and Organization required to coordinate and manage care across the continuum. Breakthrough improvements in quality and patient safety cannot be achieved without a "world class" quality management foundation that includes: Strategy: including a clear linkage of quality and patient safety to the organizational strategy and a Board-driven imperative to achieve quality goals. Infrastructure: incorporating effective quality management technology, EMR and physician order entry, evidence based care development tools and methodologies, and quality performance metrics and monitoring technology that enables "real time" information. Process: including concurrent intervention, the ability to identify key quality performance "gaps," and performance improvement tools and methodologies to effectively eliminate quality issues. Organization: providing sufficient number and quality of human resources to deliver quality planning and management leadership, adequate informatics management, effective evidence based care and physician order set development, performance improvement activity, and accredition planning to stay "survey ready every day." Culture: where a passion for quality and patient safety is embedded throughout the delivery system and leaders are incented to achieve aggressive quality improvement goals. My firm has assisted a number of progressive health systems to achieve such a foundation, and to develop truly World Class Quality. I agree. Many American health systems are significantly underinvested in quality management Infrastructure, Process, and Organization required to coordinate and manage care across the continuum. Breakthrough improvements in quality and patient safety cannot be achieved without a “world class” quality management foundation that includes:

Strategy: including a clear linkage of quality and patient safety to the organizational strategy and a Board-driven imperative to achieve quality goals.

Infrastructure: incorporating effective quality management technology, EMR and physician order entry, evidence based care development tools and methodologies, and quality performance metrics and monitoring technology that enables “real time” information.

Process: including concurrent intervention, the ability to identify key quality performance “gaps,” and performance improvement tools and methodologies to effectively eliminate quality issues.

Organization: providing sufficient number and quality of human resources to deliver quality planning and management leadership, adequate informatics management, effective evidence based care and physician order set development, performance improvement activity, and accredition planning to stay “survey ready every day.”

Culture: where a passion for quality and patient safety is embedded throughout the delivery system and leaders are incented to achieve aggressive quality improvement goals.

My firm has assisted a number of progressive health systems to achieve such a foundation, and to develop truly World Class Quality.

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