Regional Quality Team Members

Who needs to be on AF4Q local teams:

Patients and consumers of health care and their advocates;

Providers of care, including physicians, nurses, community hospitals, teaching hospitals, and community clinics;

Purchasers of care, including insurers and health plans, large employers, small businesses, and the self-employed;

The public sector, including local, county and state agencies, legislators, and regulators;

The public health community.

Objectives

Signposts on the way forward:

1 Quality improves across the full continuum of patient care.

2 The public gain a voice in how communities improve quality.

3 Providers willingly and publicly report performance and quality data.

4 People learn to use accurate and timely information to better manage their own individual and family health and health care.

5 Patient-centered care replaces process-driven care.

6 Provider organizations and institutions break down silos, share information, engage patients, and modernize hospital systems and workplace cultures.

7 Medical errors are reduced and lives saved.

8 The demand for acute “sick” care is lessened by better managing chronic medical conditions and promoting disease prevention.

9 Racial, ethnic and geographic disparities are reduced as standardized quality measures detect and track inconsistencies and inequalities.

10 Communications and coordination improves among hospitals, doctors, nurses and patients as silos break down, information is shared, and key players realign to work together.

Goals

What it will take to improve quality:

Quality: Providers improve their ability to deliver quality care.

Transparency: Providers measure and publicly report their performance.

Public Engagement: Patients and consumers recognize and demand better health care.

Key Tactics and Techniques

How it works:

Provide AF4Q communities with operations and communications assistance from a new RWJF national support center.

Link local and regional participants to other RWJF national quality programs, e.g., Improving Chronic Illness Care.

Build national consensus for consistent, shared standards of quality measurement and public reporting by enlisting the cooperation of national stakeholder organizations.

Measure both variations and similarities of patient care across the community with uniform, region-wide quality standards.

Institute public reporting from hospitals and physicians on their performance ratings.

Equip the public with information to help them determine the course of health care in their own lives and communities.

Strengthen the role of nurses at the bedside and include nursing in hospital executive decision-making.

Develop evidence-based counter-measures to reduce medical errors and more effectively manage chronic conditions.

Recalibrate internal practices and operations in local hospitals and regional health systems to focus on evidence-based, patient-centered care.

Reduce disparities in care as a requisite to quality improvement.

Measure. Evaluate. Fine-tune. Measure again.

Test new ways to reward providers for improvements in the quality of patient care.