From the President’s Desk
Your AAHQ board has been busy! We are preparing to leave at the end of this week, September 7 to be exact, for Nashville and the 2014 NAHQ Educational Conference: the Quality Continuum! We hope to see many of you there. Please let us know if you are attending. Members of the board going this year include Connie Taylor, president-elect; Gina Reves, secretary; and myself. We look forward to seeing you there! We are also proud to announce we have two members receiving grants to attend the conference. They are Terry Devlin from UAMS and Debbie Hare from White County Medical Center. You will be hearing from them after conference. They will be submitting articles for the newsletter and be active members on one or more of our teams.
I regret to let you know we lost another board member over the past couple of months. Nancy Lowe retired and as per our bylaws, retirees cannot serve on the board. Nancy will be missed and we all wish her the best and hope she enjoys retirement. The board elected not to fill the Protocol Team Leader position this late in the year and your president-elect Connie Taylor stepped up to get our ballot ready for the fall elections. Everyone be prepared to vote! We have two fine candidates for secretary and two for president. Announcements will be made soon and the election will be held in late September or early October.
The board has also been working on reviewing and revising our mission, vision and values. We hope to have a finished product for your review at our fall conference. Speaking of our fall conference – be sure to save the date, November 14 at the Gilbreath Center at Baptist Medical Center. Gilbreath has been a favorite for our conferences. We are working on a great lineup from local to national speakers. I think you will enjoy the topics and the presenters.
We will also be supporting the Healthcare Quality Foundation’s fund-raiser at conference by donating items for their silent auction. Remember donations to the HQF are used to help members and state associations through grants. Several of our own members and our association have been recipients.
And last but not least Healthcare Quality Week will be here before you know it! Let us know how you will be celebrating Quality Healthcare in Arkansas!
Sincerely,
Sandra J. “Sandy” Grinder
AAHQ President
AAHQ 2014 Member of the Year Award
Lynnette Jack, MLIS, CPHQ, received the AAHQ 2014 Member of the Year award at the AAHQ spring meeting, held April 25 at the Gilbreath Center at Baptist Little Rock. Jack works with MQRS, Inc., and has made outstanding contributions to AAHQ as the Professional Development Team co-leader, playing an instrumental role in bringing timely and valuable educational conferences to the membership over the past several years. Jack also is a second-generation Certified Professional in Healthcare Quality (CPHQ); her mother, Mary Kallenbach, has been a long-time CPHQ and member of AAHQ.
We Listened!
As you requested, the fall 2014 educational conference for the Arkansas Association for Healthcare Quality on November 14 is will address the changes at the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, changes in performance improvement monitoring and the new 11 th Statement of Work Medicare Quality Improvement Organization contract. Our speakers are:
Julie Kettlewell MPH, BSN, RNP – AVP of Quality Programs, Arkansas Foundation for Medical Care
Attorney Lynda Johnson – Friday, Eldredge and Clark
Jenny Manderino – Director of Performance Improvement and Accreditation, VHA Oklahoma/Arkansas
WHAT A LINE-UP!
We will be meeting at the Gilbreath Conference Center at Big Baptist on I-630. (The same place we met this spring.) This fall we are bringing back the poster presentation competition. This is an excellent way to show off your best practices and latest innovations. We all learn something new every time we have this competition. As usual we have a great meal planned as well as our silent auction and sponsor related displays. Come spend the day with us, enjoy a good meal and listen to the latest changes coming to a facility near you. One of the most important things to occur at our conferences is that you have the opportunity to meet with literally dozens and dozens of health care quality professionals from all across the state who are in the same boat concerning changes to our programs. What an opportunity for networking!
Hope to see you there, Terry L. Anderson RN, MSN/HCA, CPHQ, VHA-CM Chair, Professional Development Team
Call for nominations
Are you interested in serving on the AAHQ board or know someone who is? The board is currently seeking nominations of candidates for president-elect and secretary. The elections will be held sometime later this month or in October. For more information or to nominate someone, contact Connie Taylor, president-elect, at cstaylor@wcmc.org.
ADN PSO is one of first in US to perform successful transmission to network of patient safety databases
By Susan Allen, American Data Network
Arkansas’ only patient safety organization, American Data Network PSO, recently became one of the first PSOs in the United States to successfully transmit data to the national Network of Patient Safety Databases. The NPSD is an information warehouse created to receive, analyze and report on non-identified and aggregated patient safety event data with the aim of improving health care quality through the reduction of medical errors.
The U.S. Congress called for the formation of the NPSD in 2005 when it passed the Patient Safety and Quality Improvement Actand authorized the creation of PSOs as an avenue through which health care organizations could voluntarily report and share data on adverse events without fear of legal discovery. Formed in 2009, ADN PSO today is one of 76 federally designated PSOs in the country and works diligently to assist hospitals in collecting, aggregating, and analyzing patient safety event data for the purpose of identifying patterns of failure and eliminating risk and harm to patients. ADN PSO serves as a safe harbor for its clients, providing legal privilege and confidentiality protection of any information shared, assembled and reported for the conduct of patient safety activities.
ADN PSO’s incorporation of the Agency for Healthcare Research & Quality’s Common Formats in developing its event reporting application, the Quality Assurance Communication tool, positioned ADN PSO to become one of the first reporting bodies in the country to submit data to the NPSD. The Common Formats, AHRQ’s standardized set of definitions and event reporting forms, facilitate accurate comparison of data and promote large-scale aggregation and learning from errors, near misses and unsafe conditions.
“Hospitals have been collecting patient safety data for years, but because they’ve been using different definitions and tools, too much disparity has made it difficult to pool that data and draw meaningful conclusions,” Stephanie Iorio, ADN PSO director, said. “But that’s changing and we’re excited to be playing a role in bringing the industry a step closer to generating the information we all need to impact significant improvement in patient care.”
Baxter Regional Medical Center in Mountain Home transitioned from paper event reporting to ADN’s event reporting application three years ago.
“Even though Patient Safety Organizations are relatively new, I think that Baxter’s participation with a PSO speaks volumes as to how seriously we take patient safety,” the hospital’s director of quality Karla Rainwater, BSN, said. “Hospitals so often tend to wait for a mandate, but Baxter has taken a proactive approach with this. We’re ahead of the game because we’re already using the Common Formats to collect our event data, and we are proud to be contributing to an initiative that has the potential to transform patient safety.”
With its first successful transmission under its belt, ADN is moving forward with quarterly submissions to the NPSD. For more information regarding PSO participation, contact Phyllis Ragland by calling 501-225-5533 or by emailing pragland@americandatanetwork.com.
Our sponsors
ARKANSAS FOUNDATION FOR MEDICAL CARE
Julie Kettlewell, RNP, AVP of Quality Programs 1020 West 4th Street, Suite 300
Little Rock, AR 72201 Phone 501-212-8740
E-Mail jkettlewell@afmc.org Website www.afmc.org
The Arkansas Foundation for Medical Care (AFMC) was incorporated in 1972 as a private, nonprofit educational organization dedicated to the evaluation and improvement of health care. We are the federally designated quality improvement organization (QIO) for Arkansas. Our staff includes physicians, nurses, statisticians, educators, communicators – professionals with widely varied expertise, at various stages of life and career, who have been on both sides of the health care system. We work with staff in every health care setting and offer free tools and resources, such as educational materials for patients and providers and help with Medicare and Medicaid issues. We review certain types of health care paid for by Medicare and Medicaid to ensure high-quality, cost-effective care and to resolve beneficiary concerns. We help find evidence-based ways to improve preventive care as well as treatment and management of specific illnesses and conditions. We are also a health information technology regional extension center (HITREC), federally funded to provide technical assistance to health care providers as they make the transition to electronic health records. Our roles and responsibilities are constantly evolving, but they all serve the purpose of building support systems and partnerships, and helping focus the efforts of the health care community, agencies and organizations toward common goals. Together, we’re working to make health care safer, more effective and more efficient.
BANCORPSOUTH INSURANCE SERVICES, INC.
Tom Hesselbein, CPCU, Executive VP, Healthcare (Ramsey, Krug, Farrell & Lensing)
8315 Cantrell Road, Suite 300 Little Rock, AR 72227 Phone 501-614-1134
Email Tom_Hesselbein@rkfl.com
AMERICAN DATA NETWORK
Jamie Walden, Public Relations Manager
10809 Executive Center Dr., Searcy Building Suite 300 Little Rock, AR 72211 Phone 501-225-5533
Email jwalden@americandatanetwork.com Website www.americandatanetwork.com
Founded in 1994, American Data Network provides clinical, quality, safety and financial data applications and services to healthcare executives, allowing them to better manage costs and care quality, influence physician practice patterns and meet demands for public accountability and disclosure.
2014 Board of Directors
President
Sandra Grinder
501-257-6187
501-257-6179 fax
sandra.grinder@va.gov
President- Elect
Connie Taylor
501-380-3291
501-380-2342 fax
cstaylor@wcmc.org
Secretary
Gina Reves
870-262-1925
870-262-1050 fax
greves@wrmc.com
Past- President
Susan Hapner
501-202-4999
501-202-6469 fax
susan.hapner@baptist-health.org
Action Team Leaders
Protocol
Nancy Lowe
501-364-1778
501-364-4655 fax
lowenj@archildrens.org
Professional Dev.
Terry Anderson
501-257-6166
501-257-6179 fax
terry.anderson3@med.va.gov
Membership Srv.
Karen Donaldson
870-382-7657
870-460-3597 fax
kdonaldson@deltamem.net
Finance
Louise Hickman
870-541-7773
870-541-7204 fax
hickmanl@jrmc.org
Communication
Janie Ginocchio
501-212-8644
501-374-2826 fax
jginocchio@afmc.org
AHA Liaison
Cindy Harris Cook
501-224-7878
501-224-0519 fax
charris@arkhospitals.org
Editor: Janie Ginocchio
Arkansas Foundation for Medical Care Little Rock, Arkansas
NAHQ Award for Association Excellence
2001 Bronze Level Award Winner
2002 Silver Level Award Winner
2003 Gold Level Award Winner
2007 Gold Level Award Winner
2006 NAHQ Award for Support of CPHQ Certification
