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January 2009
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Call for Nominations Deadline: January 30
The nominations deadline is fast approaching! NAHQ's nominating team is seeking individuals to serve as leaders. If you are interested in a position and are a member in good standing, or if you know another NAHQ member who would be an excellent nominee, please click here for the nominations form. The open positions for 2010 are president-elect (3-year commitment) and member services director (2-year commitment). For more information, contact Cassidy Follins, NAHQ staff, at cfollins@nahq.org.
Live Audio Conference on Joint Commission Leadership Standards
Heidi Benson, MS RN CPHQ FNAHQ, NAHQ immediate past president, and Ken Rohde, senior consultant for patient safety and process improvement, The Greeley Company, will hold a live audio conference on Wednesday, January 28, 1–2:30 pm Eastern Time. Produced by HCPro, Inc., Joint Commission Leadership Standards: Key Implementation Strategies for 2009 will address key changes in leadership standards and will provide “actionable nuggets” for participants to take back to their facilities.
Meanwhile, the Joint Commission announced standards changes, effectively immediately, as a part of its ongoing deeming authority application to the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. Although the changes went into effect January 1, 2009, hospitals will not be scored on the new Leadership elements of performance (EPs) until July 2009. The audio conference will include information on these new EPs. Register today to gain expert advice, as well as valuable time-saving tips and tools, and learn about best practices that will help your organization confidently meet all the Leadership standards. To register for the audio conference, which provides 1.5 hours of continuing education, click here.
2009 Team Leader Network
The following are the 2009 team and co-team leaders:
Awards Team: Marie Ruckstuhl, MBA RN CPHQ CHCRM, Orlando, FL, and Glynn Fraker, MEd RN CPHQ, of Devereux Foundation, Villanova, PA
Conference Planning Team: Dale Harvey, MSN RN, of Virginia Commonwealth University Health System, Richmond, VA, and Sandra Jones, MSM RN CPHQ CPHRM LNCC, of Texoma Healthcare System, Denison, TX
Fellowship Review Board: Janice Walker-Redmond, RN CPHQ FNAHQ, of Ingneix Advanced Clinical Solutions, Santa Ana, CA, and Sarah Tackett, BS CPHQ FNAHQ, Springfield, OH
Healthcare Quality Foundation: Lecia A. Albright, CPHQ, of LARA Consulting LLC, Spotsylvania, VA, and Stephanie Iorio, RN, of American Data Network, Little Rock, AR
The Joint Commission PTAC Team: Susan Goodwin, MS RN CPHQ FACHE FNAHQ, of Hospital Corporation of American (HCA), Hermitage, TN, and Diane Storer Brown, PhD RN CPHQ FNAHQ, of Kaiser Permanente Northern California, Oakland, CA
Leadership Development Task Team: Anita Gottlieb, MA RNP CPHQ FNAHQ, of St. Joseph’s Mercy Health Center, Hot Springs, AR
National Quality Forum Rapid Response Team: Barbara Corn, MA BSN RN CPHQ, of UnitedHealthcare, St. Louis, MO, and Jan Orton, MS RN CPHQ, of Intermountain Healthcare, Salt Lake City, UT
Nominating Team: Thomas M. Smith, MA RN CPHQ, of HCA Central Atlantic Division, Mechanicsville, VA
Special Interest Groups (SIGs) Team: Sherry Mazer, CPHQ, of Temple University Health System, Philadelphia, PA
SIG Facilitators
- Behavioral Health—Dennis Theriault, MBA, Merrimack, NH
- Critical Access/Rural Healthcare—Charlie White, MBA CPHQ, of New Hampshire Association for Healthcare Quality, Concord, NH
- Managed Care—Constance Yancy, MBA RN CPHQ, Alexandria, VA
- Acute Care—TBD
- Long-Term Care—TBD
- Home Care—TBD
VAHQ Responds to Obama Team’s Request to Host Community Healthcare Discussions
The Virginia Association for Healthcare Quality (VAHQ) recently responded to the invitation by President-Elect Obama’s transition team to host a grassroots community discussion group on healthcare. “The incoming administration was requesting input from small focus groups on a number of specific healthcare policy issues, and the VAHQ Board felt that this was a unique opportunity to offer comment on these issues from the perspective of healthcare quality professionals,” said VAHQ President-Elect Lecia A. Albright. “The transition health policy team requested that all input be sent to them by January 4, 2009, so that the contributions from these discussion groups could be included in their development of healthcare policy for the President-Elect.”
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VAHQ held its healthcare community discussion group meeting on December 20. “There was an energetic and lively review of the key questions and topics included in the meeting materials provided by the transition team,” Albright said. “The group also incorporated a number of healthcare quality issues that meeting invitees felt were important to add to the discussion.” The VAHQ Board forwarded a summary of the group’s recommendations to Health and Human Services Secretary-designate Tom Daschle’s transition health policy team and received an acknowledgment and thank-you for the submission, along with an invitation to “stay posted on the latest developments” at www.change.gov. |
New Special Interest Groups
Starting in early February, six new Special Interest Groups (SIGs) will be available as a NAHQ members-only benefit—in the areas of acute care, behavioral health, critical access/rural healthcare, home care, long-term care, and managed care. SIGs connect individuals with similar interests and allow them to share knowledge, promote specialties, identify professional challenges, and advance the profession. Watch for an e-mail in early February with instructions for joining the SIG of your choice and signing up for an individual Listserv. If you checked a specific organization or facility type on your NAHQ membership application, you will be automatically added to the appropriate SIG Listserv. If you did not identify an organization or facility type, you will need to sign up through the Members-Only section of the NAHQ Web site. You may join as many SIGs as you like. For more information, go to www.nahq.org.
Book Review: Home-Centered Health Care
By the time Mike Magee, MD, takes center stage as keynote speaker at the NAHQ’s 34th Annual Educational Conference in Grapevine, TX, in mid-September, the Obama Administration will be ending its eighth month in office. It will be interesting to hear from Magee how the Administration’s healthcare reform initiatives—and the proposed funding of those initiatives—play into his vision of home-centered healthcare, the centerpiece of his book Home-Centered Health Care: The Populist Transformation of the American Health Care System.
In his book, Magee discusses the convergence of several societal trends that are contributing to the formation of this new paradigm of care, which replaces the many silos of care that currently dot our healthcare landscape. According to Magee, such trends include the following: |
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- An aging society is forming families that span four or five generations instead of the current three generations.
- The number of informal caregivers is rising. These caregivers are now present in a quarter of American homes, and they “are educated, motivated, and involved in healthcare decisions,” Magee says. “They represent a populist force that increasingly questions the status quo.” These caregivers are the home health managers of tomorrow who, with physicians and nurses, will be active participants in the healthcare team.
- Physicians will partner with their patients to collectively move from “individual to team-support models” of care. Universal healthcare insurance will be the norm, and a “medical information highway” will be constructed around the patient.
- Home care will center on prevention, behavioral modification, monitoring, and treatment of chronic disease. New technologies, funded through private investments, will alter the home by including “pervasive motion/location sensors, vital signs monitoring, blood and imaging diagnostics, intelligence analytic software, personalized prompter coaching interfaces, and Internet data transfer to care networks—functionally bringing the virtual care team and its resources into the home and obviating the need for most office visits and many hospitalizations.”
Among topics covered in the book are healthcare lifespan planning, ways to bring health education into the home, wise investments in health, and management of end-of-life care. Magee also shares his predictions for the next 10 years as they relate to home-centered care. The book will be on sale at the conference.
Editor’s Note: Have you recently read a book on healthcare quality? NAHQ e-news invites you to share your opinions on that book with your colleagues. Feel free to send a review (300–500 words) to Jane Martinsons, NAHQ e-news Editor, at e-news@nahq.org. Your fellow NAHQ members will appreciate your comments and feedback!
NAHQ e-news Readership Survey Results
Thanks to the nearly 300 NAHQ e-news readers who recently responded to our online readership survey. Ninety-two percent of readers said the newsletter is meeting their needs, and 60% said they share it with others, including personnel from infection control, risk management, patient safety, and nursing. Survey respondents also provided feedback on issues they’d like to see covered this year. Among the most requested topics were Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services regulations and core measures, Joint Commission standards and changes, and SIG-related issues. Other suggestions were technology and the electronic health record; pay for performance; infection control and National Patient Safety Goals; public reporting and transparency; insurance, risk management and national health insurance; Lean/Six Sigma; and issues related to the election and the economy. We appreciate your input and promise to address your concerns!
New Career Center Link in NAHQ e-news
You can now link to the NAHQ Career Center through NAHQ e-news (see left column). The NAHQ Career Center allows you to search for job opportunities in the healthcare quality field and to place recruitment advertisements. Members and nonmembers have access to this beneficial site. The Career Center averages 2,500 visitors and 50 new postings per month, and it offers exposure to professionals practicing or consulting in acute, managed, long-term, home, rehabilitation, mental health, and ambulatory care settings. To find out more about the Career Center, contact Randi Romanek, NAHQ National Sales Manager, at rromanek@nahq.org.
This issue of NAHQ e-news is sponsored by CDA Antimicrobial.
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