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View the full list of ASQ trainings
Robert Burney, M.D.,
blogs about healthcare
efficiency.
In This Issue
- Focus on Behavioral Health and Quality: Behavioral health encompasses human behavior and the well-being of the body.
- Guest Essay: Read about NIATx’s customer experience process improvement.
- This Issue’s Announcements: Learn more about the 2009 Quality Institute for Healthcare, the next lean Six Sigma Black Belt blended course and the new Healthcare Update: Tools and Applications edition.
- Quality News: Read current news stories about quality tools and trends in the healthcare field, as well as issues facing the healthcare industry.
Focus On…
BEHAVIORAL HEALTH AND QUALITY
Behavioral health refers to the reciprocal relationship between human behavior—individual or social—and the well-being of the body, mind and spirit, whether the latter are considered individually or as an integrated whole, according to Wikipedia.
How to Measure Patient Satisfaction
This QP article offers seven practical recommendations that can improve patient satisfaction results. Author Jerry Spicer mentions the results of a study from Hazelden Foundation in Minnesota, a well-known institution with more than 50 years of experience treating substance abuse and related physical and mental health problems. More
(Please note: This article will be available to Healthcare Update readers until Dec. 31.)
Blogs on Behavioral Health
ASQ’s Healthcare Efficiency blogger, Robert Burney, M.D., writes about behavioral health in two blog posts:
Programs and Tools to Improve the Quality of Mental Health Services
Major depressive disorder is the leading cause of disability among adults, and suicide ranks as the second leading cause of death among U.S. adolescents ages 10 to 17, according to the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality. In any given year, more than 2 million Americans suffer the symptoms of schizophrenia, but less than half receive appropriate treatment. More
Iowa’s 1st Five Initiative: Improving Early Childhood Developmental Services Through Public–Private Partnerships
The Iowa Department of Public Health’s “1st Five Healthy Mental Development Initiative” is bridging public and private healthcare systems to improve early detection of social-emotional delays and prevention of mental health problems among young children and their families. More
NIATx and Mental Health Case Studies
NIATx—a partnership between the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation’s Paths to Recovery program, the Center for Substance Abuse Treatment’s Strengthening Treatment Access and Retention program, and a number of independent treatment organizations—offers process improvement case studies from mental health providers. More
Behavioral Health Resources
Guest Essays
Process Improvement in Behavioral Healthcare
Kim Johnson writes about how NIATx member organizations’ staffers undertake walk-throughs to gain a first-person customer experience. NIATx, formerly known as the Network for the Improvement of Addiction Treatment, is an improvement collaborative that works with substance abuse and behavioral health organizations across the country. Read more.
Guest Essay is an ongoing Healthcare Update feature. Authors working in the healthcare field explore the role quality tools and methods play in delivering better care and driving down costs.
If you would like to submit a Guest Essay for consideration, send an e-mail to Healthcare Update editor Nicole Adrian.
This Issue’s Announcements
Register for Lean SSBB Blended Training
Start the new year out on the right path with Lean Six Sigma Black Belt for Healthcare. This ASQ blended training will take place Jan. 6–May 19. The blended structure allows participants to enjoy the best of instructor-led virtual sessions, individual coaching sessions, face-to-face training and web-based training while discovering how to optimize processes, improve patient safety and reduce costs. Register for the training.
QIHC: Building Better Performing Delivery Systems
The Quality Institute for Healthcare (QIHC) will be held May 18–20 in Minneapolis. The conference will follow the theme "Building Better Performing Delivery Systems." This year’s focus areas include: business operating systems, delivery system redesign, improved value to patients and payers, management collaboration to deploy systems and organizational change to enable systems thinking. Learn more about the conference.
Got Quality Tool Stories to Share?
ASQ’s Healthcare Update newsletter staff wants your help. We are expanding the newsletter to include an extra edition that will feature an application focus. Healthcare Update: Quality Tools and Applications is scheduled to launch in January, and each monthly edition will feature a specific tool and include a template, how-to method or case study with tips for usage or accounts of how the tool is being used or how it could be used. This new edition will allow ASQ members and members of the ASQ community to share ideas and best practices on how quality tools work and how they can be used.
When you are published in ASQ’s Healthcare Update newsletter and tools exchange, you have a chance to reach thousands of readers all over the world. The newsletter also offers contributors one of the fastest cycle times in ASQ publishing, making it a great way to build your own personal list of publication credits. Please note this is not a vehicle to promote or sell content.
For more information, or to provide a quality tool or method for consideration, e-mail Healthcare Update Editor Nicole Adrian.
2009 Society for Health Systems Student Paper Competitions
The Society for Health Systems’ (SHS) 2009 Student Paper Competition is underway. The competition offers one award for the best undergraduate paper and one award
for the best graduate paper. The winners will present their papers at the 21st Annual SHS Conference April 2–4 in Chicago.
Submissions can include research projects, theoretical research, case studies, class projects or any type of method in which IE skills were used or could be used to improve any healthcare related service, product or process. Multiple student authors are permitted should not include faculty. Judging criteria include originality and soundness, applicability, method, organization and quality of the paper.
The undergraduate and graduate winners will receive (per team) a cash gift of $500 and up to an additional $750 toward air, hotel or miscellaneous travel expenses. Submissions are due Jan. 15 and winners will be notified Feb. 15.
Learn more about submission instructions and paper guidelines, or fill out an application form.
Keep Up with Quality Progress News
Sign up for QPConnection, a free, monthly e-newsletter that highlights content from ASQ’s flagship publication, Quality Progress. Each issue includes QP’s cover story, news section and one of two columns: One Good Idea or Back to Basics. The newsletter also includes information on ASQ membership, certification and highlights a book from ASQ Quality Press. Sign up for the newsletter.
Featured Book
The Pittsburgh Way to Efficient Healthcare: Improving Patient Care Using Toyota Based Methods provides a hopeful look at how principles borrowed from industry can be applied to make healthcare safer, and in doing so, make it more efficient and less costly. In this recent release, Naida Grunden compiles case studies from units in different hospitals around the Pittsburgh region that applied industrial principles successfully, keeping patients safer and employees more satisfied. Learn more about the book or preview a sample chapter.
Quality News
Hospitals in for Difficult Fight Against Bacterium
A nasty germ that wreaks havoc in people’s intestinal tracts is infecting hospital patients at rates much higher than previously estimated, a recent report says, according to this Quality News Today article. More
Healthcare Providers Weigh In About E-Records
According to recent surveys, larger hospitals are more likely to have electronic medical-record systems than smaller ones and most ambulatory surgery centers are opting to wait to establish these types of systems, according to a Quality News Today article. More
Hospitals Look to Robotics to Cut Pharmacy Errors
The technology adopted at Flagler Hospital in St. Augustine, FL, aimed at curtailing medication errors includes a robot, IntelliFilli.v., one of 24 in use nationwide, according to this Quality News Today article. More
NQF Endorses Guidelines for Consumer-Focused Public Reporting
The National Quality Forum recently endorsed guidelines for consumer-focused public reporting. These guidelines are intended to help report sponsors develop internet-based public reports that are consumer-friendly and explain information about healthcare quality in a way that helps consumers make informed decisions about their healthcare.
Read the draft report.
Member Profile
Gail Tsimprea, chief quality and risk management officer, McLean Hospital shares her journey into healthcare and quality. More
Want to share your quality and healthcare experience with other members? Consider submitting a profile of yourself to run in a future issue of Healthcare Update. Read the submission guidelines and list of questions.
