Gregory Maynard, MD, MSc, SFHM, has high hopes for SHM’s new Center for Hospital Innovation and Improvement. Dr. Maynard, recently appointed senior vice president of “The Center,” believes The Center’s tools, resources, and initiatives in QI and patient safety will advance hospitalists’ understanding of the implications of healthcare reform and how recent legislative changes will directly affect their jobs.
Through its Web portal, The Center aims to bring together a wide variety of resources, not only such SHM-branded initiatives as VTE Prevention and Project BOOST (Better Outcomes for Older Adults through Safe Transitions), but also relevant tools from other sources.
“The Center has grown because there’s a bigger demand all the time for the skills, knowledge, and leadership required for quality and patient safety,” Dr. Maynard says. “We recognize that frontline hospitalists are very busy with day-to-day clinical care. On the other hand, quality and safety efforts increasingly will be tied to hospital reimbursement.”
Hospital administrators are paying attention to those trends, and hospitalists are well situated to lead their response, he adds.
New quality developments at the center include:
- eQUIPS, SHM’s online toolkit for hospital QI, with a data registry and tools for comparing performance with other hospitals;
- Hospitalists and In-Hospital Resuscitation, a multidisciplinary project for standardizing resuscitation practice;
- A new initiative for atrial fibrillation and transitions of care; and
- In-hospital best practices in diabetes care for hospitalist extenders.
Dr. Maynard is director of hospital medicine and chair of the Patient Safety Committee at the University of California at San Diego (UCSD). He expects to spend one week per month at SHM’s Philadelphia office while retaining his leadership position at UCSD.