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Helping Hospitals Improve Quality of Care
"Before we joined the campaign, acute myocardial infarction, pneumonia and surgical infection prevention were on our radar," said Arja P. Adair, President and CEO of CFMC, one of the most experienced and respected medical quality improvement organizations in the United States. CFMC has been selected by The Colorado Trust to serve as the coordinating agency, or "node," for the 100k Lives Campaign, a statewide effort to prevent medical injuries from occurring in hospitals. This $3.8 million Trust campaign is based on the Institute for Healthcare Improvement's (IHI) national effort. (See associated article, Colorado Campaign to Improve Care in Hospitals.) "We're excited that The Colorado Trust will contribute even greater energy to this effort to improve care and ensure appropriate health outcomes," said Adair. "The focus of senior leadership at Colorado hospitals is to look at their processes of care and make critical improvement changes. The Trust's support of the IHI campaign offers an opportunity to systematically understand what we can do to provide better care." "The really important thing is that improvement efforts are not just focused on nurses and doctors, but also on medical directors and boards of directors," Adair continued. "There is an increasing acceptance and commitment of physicians and health care professionals to objectively measure their processes and - in a non-defensive way - identify opportunities for improvement. "Over time, we should be looking at trends that show continual improvement ... why not aim for 100%? That's my hope." |
When the Institute for Healthcare Improvement launched its national 100k Lives Campaign in December 2004, some of its recommendations to help hospitals prevent avoidable deaths were already being implemented by the Colorado Foundation for Medical Care (CFMC).