The Maine Health Management Coalition (MHMC), a partner in AF4Q Maine, wanted to encourage its members to seek care from the high quality, cost-effective providers MHMC identified. But MHMC encountered three problems:
- getting people to use the publicly reported quality information,
- helping labor and management to see eye-to-eye on changing benefits to get care at a better...
A team convened by the Greater Detroit Area Health Council (GDAHC), an AF4Q Alliance, was able to devise a plan and conduct a pilot demonstrating substantially decreased emergency department (ED) use for primary care treatable conditions—all by using inexpensive, “low-tech” methods.
Read more about this great AF4Q Bright Spot here.
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Truman Medical Center-Hospital Hill in Kansas City, MO, is an urban non-profit hospital with an ED flow of 62,000 patients. Like many EDs, Truman frequently tells its patients who received sutures to return five to seven days later to have them removed. These patients often had to wait long periods of time for this simple procedure. The facility aimed to improve its turnaround times for these patients by creating more efficiency in their suture removal protocol. The goal was to reduce door to discharge to less than 20 minutes in more than 90 percent of its wound and suture removal...
St. Elizabeth Healthcare-Edgewood in Cincinnati, OH, is a non-profit suburban hospital seeing about 77,000 emergency department (ED) patients per year. The ED recognized a significant barrier to quality and efficiency in the care of admitted patients was driven by suboptimal communication and accountability for patient handover and transfer issues. When the ED called to report on a patient, the floor nurse wasn’t available. When the floor nurse called back, the ED nurse wasn’t available. This form of “telephone tag” occurred daily and was frustrating to all staff....
Eastern Maine Medical Center placed "Blue Feet" along the corridors of their TCAB pilot unit to help patients know how far they are walking. Patients are often asked to walk a specific distance a specified number of times each day as part of their treatment plan. The "Blue Feet" help patients know exactly how far they have walked. This is an easy and inexpensive intervention developed by the staff on EMMC TCAB unit.
The 2012 Heart Failure calendar and companion nurse teaching guide are now available to help heart failure patients to take control of their condition. You Can Live with Heart Failure – Healthy Habits for...
The Albuquerque Coalition for Healthcare Quality launched a series of radio ads to educate patients about when to use an emergency department (ED) or an urgent care facility. In addition to radio ads, the Alliance is also implementing print ads in local newspapers and posters in public buildings and private employer sites. This campaign aims to reduce non-emergency visits to the ED, resulting in higher quality of care, improved efficiency, and shorter ED wait times. Pat Montoya, director of ACHQ, notes that this public service announcement initiative is part of a bigger strategy at the...
“The beauty of TCAB is that quality becomes practical in the hands of the bedside nurses who are given the tools to conduct small tests of change, then adapt, adopt, or abandon those tests until an innovation becomes a new way of doing things,” according to Judy Warmuth, WHA vice president, workforce.
Wisconsin’s TCAB initiative launched March 23-25, 2011 with more than 130 participants representing 18 medical-surgical units from 16 hospitals. TCAB is a nurse-led hospital program that engages frontline staff to work together to identify, pilot, test and adopt...
The Albuquerque Coalition for Healthcare Quality posted its first ambulatory and hospital quality reports. Hospital Snapshot uses information from Hospital Compare, an online public report developed by the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services and the U.S. Department of Health & Human Services. Hospital Snapshot provides information on Albuquerque Hospitals in a consumer-friendly format....