Articles and Toolkits on Quality and Patient Safety
The Board’s Role in Quality Oversight and Patient Safety
The latest revisions to the Quality Assurance and Performance Improvement (QAPI) program, released by the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, underscore the integral role of board members in advancing quality improvement initiatives.
Helping Boards Have Productive Discussions about Quality of Care
An important starting point for selecting an “optimal” set of quality measures for board review is to have an explicit, robust conversation among senior leaders, medical staff leaders and board members about what measures are important to track. These measures should encompass a broad and inclusive view of quality that reflects the dynamic health care environment with its growing focus on the experience of care and value from the patient’s and community’s perspective.
Understanding quality scorecards: A primer for boards
The number of public quality scorecards for hospitals has increased exponentially in recent years as consumers take more interest in getting the most value for their health care dollar. These attempts at simplifying the complex hospital environment into laypeople’s terms often condense hospital performance on a select number of quality measures into a letter grade, star or ranking — much easier for the average stakeholder to understand than risk-adjusted infection rates.
Keeping Value Front and Center in Health Care
Each year, more and more hospitals and health systems take on value-based payment by participating in alternative payment models, contracting with employers to provide care on a capitated or shared-risk basis and agreeing to tie payments from commercial payers to performance on quality or safety metrics. Despite this movement, the health care field still has a way to go on its transition from fee-for-service to value-based payment.
Governance Leadership of Quality: Confronting Realities and Creating Tension for Change
Leadership of quality is a key responsibility of governance and, done well, serves as an exceptional gift: engaged boards produce better outcomes. For all the progress made over the last 20 years, however, many boards, trustees, and executives continue to struggle with quality oversight.
Sample Patient Experience Dashboards
Trustees play a vital role in governing strategy and business operations of the health care organizations they serve. For this reason, it is essential that they understand the importance of the patient experience and how it advances the mission, vision and values of the organization.
Governance Quality Engagement Diagnostic
This diagnostic is designed to help boards and organization leaders identify challenges that may be impeding efforts to improve quality. Developed by Jim Conway, this resource draws on 20 years of personal governance experience as well as learning from the literature and the shared experience of trustees, executives, patients, family members, staff, teachers, and students.
System Board Quality Committee Guidelines
This document includes guidelines for system board quality committees, including: approval of an annual Quality and Performance Improvement Plan which is supportive of the system’s strategic goals, and which will include specific core performance improvement indicators in the areas of clinical quality, accreditation compliance, patient safety, and customer satisfaction (patient, physician, and employee), to be measured at all care sites; approval of annual performance targets for those indicators; quarterly monitoring of measurements of those core indicators; and feedback to care sites of desired performance improvement in specific areas.
The Importance of Quality and Patient Safety
As we begin a new year, Sue Ellen Wagner, vice president, trustee engagement and strategy at the AHA, looks at what lies ahead for boards with Vincent Williams, board chair, Sinai Health System, Chicago, and 2024 Committee on Governance (COG) Chair.
Leadership Matters: A Roadmap Toward Effective Governance of Quality and Safety
The Joint Commission shares six steps that can lead to improvement in an organization’s quality performance.
Quality Oversight, Health Equity and the Community Board’s Role
Four core areas can be leveraged to institute meaningful change.
You Have the Quality and Safety Report. Now What?
Quality and Safety expert Dr. Elizabeth Mort shares how trustees can positively affect quality care from the boardroom.
Trustees Focus on Quality to Improve Health Care
Non-profit boards have array of resources to fulfill quality mission.