DMAA Committee to Support Patient Safety Initiatives
The Disease Management Association of America (DMAA) has formed a committee that will be dedicated to further engaging the disease management community to support national initiatives in patient safety.

By providing a DM focus, the new DMAA committee broadened the traditional patient safety focus to encompass best interdisciplinary practices that yield improved clinical and cost outcomes in care management. The empowerment of patients and caregivers in the home setting is included as a core DM component in patient safety to avoid preventable re-hospitalizations and other costly adverse events. DMAA supports the Institute of Medicine (IOM) efforts in this vein and applauds all efforts to improve patient safety by the healthcare community. DMAA Executive Director Warren Todd adds, "The challenges of patient safety were appropriately surfaced more as an acute care/inpatient issue. In reality, the impact of patient safety issues is potentially even greater in the chronic care population. Thanks to the many volunteer members of DMAA, we believe that the DM community can provide invaluable support to our colleagues from other sectors of the industry in substantially improving patient safety in this country."

The committee, part of the Quality and Research Committee structure, intends to help DMAA serve as a clearinghouse for patient safety information, pilot programs, and other efforts. It will help members and other stakeholders to understand how DM supports patient safety and related accreditation efforts. In addition, the committee will help coordinate patient safety efforts to avoid duplication, empower patients, and support the interdisciplinary team in best practice across the care continuum to best serve individuals with chronic diseases. Based in Washington, D.C., the Disease Management Association of America is a nonprofit, voluntary membership organization, founded in March of 1999, which represents all aspects of the disease management community.

Source: DMAA

CMS and JCAHO Adopt Standardized Performance Measures
In an effort to help consumers make the best decisions about their healthcare, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) and the Joint Commission on the Accreditation of Healthcare Organizations (JCAHO) announced in September that they are adopting standardized performance measures for hospitals to report how well they provide healthcare services. CMS and JCAHO have issued a technical manual for hospital quality measures that provides common definitions for each of the quality measures that are being collected and reported. Hospitals will use these common definitions to report on their quality for both the National Voluntary Hospital Reporting Initiative and for JCAHO accreditation, beginning with January 2005 discharges.

Participating hospitals currently report data giving consumers information about performance in three medical conditions — heart attack, heart failure, and pneumonia. These conditions can result in hospital stays and are common among people with Medicare.

This effort joins other CMS activities to improve the quality of care for Medicare beneficiaries living in nursing homes and receiving care from dialysis centers, home health agencies, and health plans through public reporting of measures that assess the quality of care that is delivered.ÝSince 2002, CMS has participated in a joint public-private initiative to foster public reporting of the quality of care available in the nation's hospitals.

The initial set of measures selected for use in the voluntary hospital reporting initiative were measures common to CMS and the JCAHO, but there were technical differences between the ways that the measures were specified by the two organizations. These technical differences increased the data collection and reporting burdens on hospitals.ÝThe technical manual is available on the CMS Web site at http://www.cms.hhs.gov/quality/hospital/.

Source: www.cms.gov

Joint Commission Issues Alert on Patient Awareness Under Anesthesia
Tens of thousands of patients undergoing surgery each year experience the helplessness of being partially awake while under general anesthesia during surgery, but being unable to communicate their distress to caregivers. Better understanding among healthcare professionals of this frightening phenomenon could reduce the risk of these events and assure appropriate support for patients when they do occur, according to an Alert issued on October 6, 2004, by the Joint Commission on Accreditation of Healthcare Organizations.

The phenomenon of anesthesia awareness affects an estimated 20,000 to 40,000 patients each year. While that figure represents only one to two cases in every 1,000 general anesthetics administered, the experience is traumatic for those patients who do become aware. Patients undergoing cardiac, obstetric, and major trauma surgeries are at proportionately higher risk for anesthesia awareness, according to the Joint Commission's Sentinel Event Alert patient safety newsletter.

"Anesthesia awareness is under-recognized and under-treated in healthcare organizations," says Dennis S. O'Leary, M.D., president of the Joint Commission. "The Joint Commission understands that anesthesia professionals must balance the psychological risks of anesthesia awareness against the physiological risks of excessive anesthesia. This Alert is intended to help healthcare organizations address this problem in an open and constructive fashion."

The Alert, "Preventing and Managing the Impact of Anesthesia Awareness," and a complete list and text of past issues of Sentinel Event Alert can be found on the Joint Commission Web site: www.jcaho.com.Ý

Source: JCAHO

Certification Commission for Healthcare IT Names Inaugural Slate of Commissioners
The Certification Commission for Healthcare Information Technology, formed by three leading healthcare organizations — HIMSS, AHIMA, and The National Alliance for Health Information Technology — to create an efficient, impartial, and trusted mechanism for certifying ambulatory electronic health records and other healthcare information technology (IT) products, has appointed its initial slate of commissioners.

The commissioners, who will serve one-year terms, represent three primary stakeholders: providers that purchase healthcare IT products; vendors that develop, market, install, and support these systems; and purchasers or payers that are prepared to offer incentives and support for healthcare IT adoption.

The commissioners are C. Martin Harris, MD, CIO, Cleveland Clinic Foundation; Douglas E. Henley, MD, executive VP and CEO, American Academy of Family Physicians; John Hummel, senior VP, Information Systems, and corporate chief information officer, Sutter Health; Charles Kennedy, MD, vice president of clinical informatics, WellPoint Health Networks Inc.; Graham O. King, strategic advisor, McKesson Corporation; Mark Leavitt, MD, PhD, commission chair and medical director, HIMSS; Jane B. Metzger, VP, First Consulting Group; Susan N. Postal, VP, Health Information Management Services, Hospital Corporation of America; Wes Rishel, research director, Gartner, Inc.; John Tooker, MD, executive VP and CEO, American College of Physicians; Reed Tuckson, MD, senior VP, Consumer Health and Medical Care Advancement, United Health Group; and Andy Ury, MD, CEO, Physician Micro Systems, Inc. Non-voting, ex officio members are Lori Evans, Office of the National Health Information Technology Coordinator; and Clay Ackerly, special assistant to the administrator for HIT, CMS.

To encourage the adoption of healthcare IT for improving care and efficiency, the American Health Information Management Association (AHIMA), Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society (HIMSS), and The National Alliance for Health Information Technology (Alliance) formed the certification commission in July and are providing the initial funding and staff. Through voluntary certification of products, the commission aims to reduce the risk of IT investment by healthcare providers while ensuring interoperability of healthcare IT products with emerging local and national health information infrastructures.

Source: www.himss.org

Yale-New Haven Wins 1st UHC Award for Excellence in Quality & Safety
Yale-New Haven Hospital is the recipient of the first Excellence in Quality and Safety Award, bestowed to Yale-New Haven project team members at the University HealthSystem Consortium's fall meeting in Scottsdale, AZ. Yale-New Haven's submission, "Prevention of Nosocomial Catheter Associated Urinary Tract Infections," took first place among a field of 40 submissions from academic medical centers across the country. An internal panel of experts in quality and safety screened de-identified entries before selecting the top five for review by a national panel. The judges who selected Yale-New Haven's entry as the winning application were David M. Gaba, MD, director, Patient Safety Center of Inquiry, Palo Alto VA Health Care System; Molly Joel Coye, MD, president, CEO, Health Technology Center; Ada Sue Hinshaw, PhD, RN, FAAN, dean and professor, The University of Michigan School of Nursing; and Michael Cohen, RPh, MS, ScD, president, Institute for Safe Medication Practices.

Applications for the UHC award were ranked for:

• Project purpose. Was the purpose clearly stated and based on an identified need?
  
  
• Budget. Did it include the use of existing staff time and the cost of any external resources?
  
  
• Project team. Was the team multidisciplinary, and did it include all key stakeholders?
  
  
• Project plan and goals. Were these clearly stated and achievable?
  
  
• Leadership commitment. Was the commitment of leadership evident in the project?
  
  
• Replicability and sustainability. Could lessons from the project be replicated throughout the organization and have initial results been sustained?
  
  
• Collateral benefit. Could the process be applied to other areas?
  
  
• Innovation. Did it go beyond normal workloads in daily jobs?
  
  
• Return on investment. Did it quantify ROI using financial or outcome measures?

"Our members are innovative and have an incredible commitment to clinical quality and safety, which often goes unrecognized. Having reviewed the 40 responses in this first year of competition confirmed that academic medical centers are often working quietly yet diligently to improve the patient experience. Yale-New Haven presents a sound example of how a strong business case can be made for safety and quality," said Barbara Youngberg, UHC vice president for insurance, risk, quality, and legal services, and developer of the award.

UHC is an alliance of 90 academic medical centers with more than 100 of their affiliate hospitals. UHC offers its members specific programs and services to improve clinical and operational performance unique to academic medical settings.

Source: UHC

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