VHAN Hospital Quality Committee Aims to Improve Care Coordination

The Hospital Quality Committee (HQC) was formally established last year as a subcommittee of the VHAN Clinical Performance Committee. Led by Joseph Landsman, CEO and President of University of Tennessee Medical Center, the committee is made up of quality leaders from network health systems.

The committee is dedicated to driving collaboration across hospitals with a focus on the inpatient component of the episode. The goal is to improve coordination of care and patient outcomes, while enabling the network to continuously learn and deliver measurable improvements within an action-oriented setting. The committee addresses common patient safety measures, improvement activities, processes and best practices, and hospital-based quality programs to form network-wide initiatives.

In October, the HQC narrowed its focus to Falls with Harm and CMS Patient Safety Indicators (PSI 90) for the first network-wide inpatient quality and safety initiatives. Workgroups consisting of representatives from each health system in the network have collaborated to report on individual data results, share current workflows and make recommendations on a network-wide approach to addressing Falls with Harm and CMS PSI 90. The workgroups have also forged strong relationships across the network to enhance collaboration and encourage VHAN hospitals to adopt best practices.

We are excited to share the following outcomes from this initiative. HQC workgroups:

• Have agreed upon best practices that will improve quality and safety across the network
• Will implement strongly recommended practices and utilized subject matter experts from the network for guidance as needed
• Will share and utilize content made available through VHAN
• Will standardize performance measures and share progress with other network affiliates on a regular cadence

In the coming months, the HQC will create an implementation and adoption plan to measure ongoing performance related to Falls with Harm and CMS PSI 90. Look to future VHAN newsletters to learn more about how hospitals can create a culture of safety for long-term success in these areas.