Does Improving Quality Save Money?

QUERI Implementation Practice Seminar

Does improving quality save money? A review of research and research methods.
Presentation by John Ovretveit, PhD
Monday, November 9, 12:00pm - 1:30pm ET

** Advance registration is now required **

Register for the session on November 9

Check your Live Meeting settings in advance

Questions? Email cyberseminar@va.gov

This is a QUERI Implementation Practice Seminar Presentation. For more information on these and other HSR&D Cyber Seminars go to http://www.hsrd.research.va.gov/for_researchers/cyber_seminars.

Preliminary INQRI Results

Interested in hearing more about the work INQRI funds? We've pulled together some research syntheses featuring preliminary findings from several of our grantee teams. These documents are available in PDF format at our website, www.inqri.org.

Check them out:

Acute Care
Pain Management
Nurse Staffing and Environment
Medication Errors

Digital Divide in Hospitals that Care for Poor Patients

This week in an online edition of Health Affairs, researchers resport that hospitals that serve a larger share of poor patients are lagging far behind others in adopting electronic health records (EHR). Ashish Jha, M.D., M.P.H., associate professor at the Harvard School of Public Health and colleagues at Massachusetts General Hospital and George Washington University believe that this digital divide could increase disparities in care and without federal dollars, hospitals that serve the poor will have a difficult time catching up on EHR use.

Study highlights include:

"Hospitals with higher rates of poor patients had lower levels of adoption of electronic clinical decision support tools, lower rates of electronic medication lists and electronic discharge summaries.

Among hospitals without an EHR system, inadequate capital was cited significantly more often as a barrier to adoption by high disproportionate share (DSH) hospitals than low ones.

High-DSH hospitals were significantly more likely than low-DSH hospitals to report concerns about future support."

This study will appear as the third in a series of broad reports on health information technology adoption trends in hospitals, funded by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and the federal government’s Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology. The executive summary for this report, "Health Information Technology in the United States: On the Cusp of Change, 2009," was released Monday; the full report will be released in early November.

Read the Health Affairs article.
Download the executive summary.
Read the press release.

What would you do with a blank check to transform health care?

The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation's (RWJF) Pioneer Portfolio is dedicated to powering ideas that have the ability to truly transform health and health care and, to do so we’re encouraging people to think big.

From October 27-30, members of the Pioneer Team will be in San Diego as a sponsor of TEDMED2009. While there, the team will ask participants: If someone handed you a blank check—what would you do to transform the future of health and health care? Where are the breakthrough opportunities that could bring about significant improvements?

This conversation is not limited to the attendees at TEDMED. RWJF is taking the conversation to Twitter to hear your inspiring ideas. Join the conversation and share how you would transform the future of health and health care by tagging your “tweets” with the #blankcheck hashtag.

Nurses and Handwashing

In a new article, "Nurses lead the way in hand hygiene" from Endocrinology Update, Chris Kennedy writes:

"As a push for a national hand hygiene initiative gets underway, research has shown nurses outshine doctors and other medical staff by having the cleanest hands in the hospital."

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INQRI researchers are also recognizing the impact nurses can have in this arena. A research team at Johns Hopkins University has conducted the first randomized-control trial to reduce central line associated blood stream infections among ICU patients. There are some 80,000 catheter-induced bloodstream infections each year, causing up to 28,000 deaths. This study, conducted in ICUs in 12 states, has shown in preliminary analysis that substantial reductions in infections can be widely achieved and this project did so with nurses leading the infection control efforts. Their study builds on the well-known work of Dr. Peter Pronovost, creator of the line-insertion “checklist.” Hospitals that followed the components of their ICU safety program, as well as adopted a safety improvement environment that fostered nurse involvement in quality improvement efforts, reduced, and in some cases completely eliminated, bloodstream infections for several months at a time. Their research is also showing that higher nurse turnover is related to higher infection rates.

Click here to read Chris Kennedy's article.
Click here for more information on the INQRI researchers.

José Pagán: Link Your Research To Current Debates

As the debate rages in Washington over health care reform, how can a nursing researcher get their results in front of policymakers who are making decisions? That's a question José A. Pagán, Ph.D., a member of the Interdisciplinary Nursing Quality Research Initiative (INQRI) National Advisory Committee, says INQRI grantees must consider when conducting research.

"Because of health care reform, this is an exciting time to be doing the kind of research that INQRI funds," says Pagán, Professor and Chair of the Department of Health Management and Policy at the School of Public Health, University of North Texas Health Science Center at Fort Worth. "We are learning more about the role of nurses and how nurses can improve quality and how nurses can keep costs down."

Click here to read more.

INQRI Grantee Creating a Research Network Focusing on Nursing Care

INQRI grantee Kathleen R. Stevens (The University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio) will lead a new two-year project, funded by a $3 million grant from the National Institute for Nursing Research, to help improve the bedside manner of the country’s nurses. This project seeks to create the first national research network to focus on front-line hospital care delivered by nurses.

Click here to learn more about this project...

...In the meantime, watch Dr. Stevens' recent presentation on her INQRI project, "Small Troubles, Adaptive Responses [STAR]: Fostering a Quality Culture in Nursing."