To further educate and energize hospitalist leaders who have been charged with leading this change, SHM developed the Leadership Academy. To date more than 400 hospitalist leaders have been trained in sold-out small-group sessions during the past two years. The most recent academy was held last month in Orlando, Fla.
SHM provides additional training for those who will implement quality improvement at the Quality Training precourse at the SHM Annual Meeting. In the precourse up to 100 change leaders get hands-on direction, tools, and tricks of the trade to allow them to succeed in their local efforts. The next Quality Training Precourse will be held in small group sessions on May 23, 2007, in Dallas.
The SHM Annual Meeting has consistently been a venue that allows hospitalists to hear from national thought leaders in the quality revolution. In 2006, hospitalists heard from Carolyn Clancy, MD, CEO of the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, and Jack Rowe, MD, CEO of Aetna Insurance Company.
At this year’s meeting Jonathan Perlin, MD, PhD, who led the cutting edge QI efforts at Veterans Affairs and who is now bringing innovation to HCA (Nashville, Tenn.), the nation’s largest hospital company, will share his ideas with us. In addition, hospitalists will hear from David Brailer, MD, PhD, President George W. Bush’s first appointee to head up national efforts for health information technology. In addition, SHM’s Bob Wachter, MD, a nationally recognized leader in QI and patient safety, will share his perspectives on hospital medicine. With Drs. Perlin, Brailer, and Wachter, SHM continues its tradition of placing innovations that are changing healthcare for the better front and center at our annual meeting.
As for the future, SHM has submitted a multi-year grant application to the Hartford Foundation (Conn.) to expand our efforts—specifically in developing implementation strategies to improve the care processes and outcomes for the senior population.
One of the key areas that emerged from SHM’s work with the Hartford Foundation is the importance of improving the transitions of care and better coordinating healthcare from the patient’s point of view. This has led SHM to partner with several national organizations to make sense of what has been a squishy subject. SHM is working closely with the American Board of Internal Medicine (ABIM) Foundation on its Stepping Up to the Plate consortium, a group of specialty physicians focusing on best practice strategies in patient-centered transitions, hand-offs, and information transfer.
In addition, SHM is working with the American College of Physicians, the AHRQ, the ABIM, the American Geriatrics Society (AGS), and the Society of General Internal Medicine to hold a National Consensus Conference in 2007 to establish policy on transitions of care. The conference will involve a broad range of stakeholders and may very well lead to the establishment of performance standards that can be applied directly to patient care.
Also SHM has been working with the Case Management Society of America to bring together the broader healthcare team on its National Transitions of Care Coalition (NTOCC) project. NTOCC includes pharmacists (American Society of Health-System Pharmacists), the C-suite (American College of Healthcare Executives), social workers (National Association of Social Workers), geriatricians (the AGS), the Joint Commission on Accreditation of Healthcare Organizations, and others. NTOCC plans to develop clear tools, guidelines, and pathways for consistent communication among patients, providers, and payers throughout the care continuum, and to look at aligning incentives for use of these tools and resources.
SHM has also worked with recognized leaders in action-oriented campaigns in QI, including the IHI—first on its “100,000 Lives Campaign,” and more recently on its “5 Million Lives Campaign.” In fact, leadership from only one medical professional society—SHM—was on the stage with Don Berwick for IHI’s national announcement at the December 2006 IHI national meeting in Orlando.