MHA's Statewide Performance Improvement Agenda
Patient safety and high quality care are priorities at Massachusetts hospitals, and Bay State hospitals are national leaders in voluntary reporting of patient quality and safety information. But Massachusetts hospitals are committed to doing even more to improve healthcare quality and patient safety. The MHA Board of Trustees has unanimously endorsed an association-wide initiative to move beyond public reporting and transparency to make measurable, concrete improvements in hospitals' performance. MHA is proud to announce its Statewide Performance Improvement Agenda focused on three strategic performance priorities. Our goal is for Massachusetts hospitals to collectively:
Improve Efficiency by reducing preventable readmissions
Improve Safety by reducing in central line-associated bloodstream infections (CLABSI)
To view a list of hospitals whose boards of directors have signed on to the Statewide Performance Improvement Agenda, click here.
On the linked pages, you will find data and descriptions of efforts by hospitals and collaborating organizations to meet these goals. We will work to obtain and display the best and most timely measure data to gauge our progress toward these goals, and we welcome suggestions for practical ways to better measure and document that progress.
In Memoriam: Joyce Clifford
Joyce C. Clifford, a national nursing leader, has died at age 76. Dr. Clifford was perhaps best known as former Senior VP and Nurse-in-Chief of Boston's Beth Israel Hospital, and for developing the "primary nursing" model where an individual nurse cares for a particular patient throughout a hospital stay. She most recently was President and CEO of The Institute for Nursing Healthcare Leadership.
Clifford was a fellow of the American Academy of Nursing and a former President of the American Organization of Nurse Executives. She was a member of the AHA Board of Trustees from 1991-94, and the recipient of numerous awards and honor-ary degrees. At MHA she is remembered for leading the original workgroup that identified the nurse-sensitive measures for reporting on the Patient-CareLink website. She was also a valued advisor who influenced MHA's collaboration with the Department of Higher Education to advance nurse practice and education. She was also project director for the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation nurse-sensitive measure study of which MHA was a partner.
"Healthcare has lost an exemplary colleague, advocate, and mentor with the passing of Dr. Joyce Clifford," said MHA'S V.P. of Clinical Affairs Pat Noga, R.N., PhD. "Her wise, yet unassuming and humorous ways influenced innumerable nurses and healthcare professionals and profoundly advanced patient care around the world."
Massachusetts Hospitals' Improved Care Measures Cut Costs by $151.2 Million, Report Finds Better Quality Care and Reduced Costs Due to Performance Improvement Measures
July 26, 2011 -- Massachusetts hospitals enhanced care quality and decreased healthcare costs by more than $151 million for acute and specialty care hospitals statewide between 2007 and 2009, a report by an independent research and analysis firm has found. These results correspond to increased intra-hospital collaboration and voluntary public reporting of nursing-sensitive care measures. The findings from Abt Associates, a leading health, social, and environmental research and program implementation firm, show the statewide occurrence of pressure ulcers fell nearly 36 percent at Massachusetts acute care hospitals and 44 percent at specialty hospitals from 2007 to 2009. The statewide overall rates for pressure ulcers were 2.04 percent and 1.92 percent at acute and specialty hospitals, down from 3.15 percent and 3.43 percent respectively. The analysis also found that falls and falls-with-injury rates declined at both acute and specialty hospitals. Read the report here.
In Health Affairs, "An Early Look At A Four-State Initiative To Reduce Avoidable Hospital Readmissions"
Launched in 2009, the State Action on Avoidable Rehospitalizations initiative, known as STAAR, aims to reduce rates of avoidable rehospitalization in Massachusetts, Michigan, Ohio, and Washington by mobilizing state-level leadership to improve care transitions. With the program two years into its four-year cycle, 148 hospitals are working in partnership with more than 500 cross-continuum team partners. Although there are no publicly available data on whether the project is achieving its primary goal of reducing avoidable rehospitalizations, the effort has so far been successful in aligning numerous complementary initiatives within a state, developing statewide rehospitalization data reports, and mobilizing a sizable number of hospitals to work on reducing rehospitalizations. More than 90 percent of participating hospitals have formed teams to routinely review rehospitalizations with their community-based colleagues.
Abstract >>