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IQI is intended to “raise the bar” on quality improvement skills and competencies of providers and organizations serving frail elders and children in communities of poverty across western and central New York. CHFWCNY’s investments in IQI are expected to improve the quality of care and services for these people and ultimately achieve better population health outcomes.
CHFWCNY’s quality improvement work began in 2005 by sponsoring a Quality improvement Collaborative (QIC) to address end of life and transitions of care challenges faced by frail elders. Since then we have sponsored two more QIC’s related to transitions of care and our first QIC designed to impact children in poverty. 2005 was also the first year CHFWCNY sponsored the satellite broadcast of the Institute for Healthcare Improvement’s annual conference in both of our regions. We partnered with the P2 Collaborative in 2008 to develop and implement Fundamentals of QI and Improving Care and Caring in WNY and both of these trainings will be offered in CNY during 2010.
In 2009 a white paper was commissioned to better understand the QI from a national perspective. Key conclusions and recommendations from the paper reinforced what we are learning and provide guidance for next steps to consider in further developing our QI work. These are:
· QIC’s are valuable but should not be the only QI approach
· Spreading and sustaining the QI work CHFWCNY has started needs to be addressed
· Leadership commitment at the most senior level (CEO, Board) is essential for achieving the benefits of QI
· Evaluation of CHFWCNY’s QI efforts is important to inform future work and the field
· CHFWCNY has a number of opportunities to become a national model for QI innovation and health improvement
These recommendations in conjunction with our learnings from existing QI work will inform our next steps in IQI.
Addenda:
Institute for Healthcare Improvement
P2 Collaborative of WNY
Optimizing Quality: Effective Approaches to Improving the Health of Children in Poverty and Frail Elders
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