Urgent Mattes E-Newsletter
Volume 6, Issue 1
In this Issue:
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Performance Measurement
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Urgent Matters Learning Network II: Improving Patient Flow and Reducing Emergency Department Crowding
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Best Practices: Creating Sustainable Change Through Quality Improvement Projects
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Innovations: Developing Standards for ED Care, Urgent Matters Learning Network II
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Perspectives: Looking Through Different Lenses: Multiple Stakeholder Perspectives on ED Performance Measures
Performance Measurement
The ultimate goal of performance measurement is to improve the quality and safety of patient care. From meaningful data, problems can be identified and success measured. There is a vast amount of literature describing the importance of using performance measures; however, gaps exist concerning the manner in which performance measures should be established. This issue of the Urgent Matters E-Newsletter features three examples of how the development of performance measures is driving sustainable quality improvement in the emergency department.
Urgent Matters Learning Network II
Improving Patient Flow and Reducing Emergency Department Crowding
For the past seven years, health care leaders from around the country have been partnering with EDs across the country to develop and deliver strategies to improve patient flow and reduce ED crowding. Working under the banner Urgent Matters (UM) and funded by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (RWJF), these innovators are poised to improve care in what has become hospitals’ highest-traffic area, a place where the uninsured routinely flock and where entire communities will invariably turn in the event of a pandemic outbreak or terrorist attack.
Best Practices
Creating Sustainable Change Through Quality Improvement Projects
Most people with an urgent medical need breathe a sigh of relief when they arrive at the doors of their local emergency department. Even if they’re made to wait for care, there’s a comfort, a peace of mind that comes from being so close to trained clinicians and life-saving equipment.
But Mel Stibal, administrative director of the Emergency Department/Trauma Center at Memorial Regional Hospital in Hollywood, Florida doesn’t see it that way.
Innovations
Developing Standards for ED Care, Urgent Matters Learning Network II
“The growing trend towards hospital performance measurement and public reporting may very well include the 5000+ hospital emergency departments in the next several years,” reports Mark McClelland, registered nurse and research scientist at the Center for Health Care Quality at The George Washington University Medical Center (GW). The six hospitals in the Urgent Matters Learning Network II (LNII), however, are not waiting for that time to come.
Perspectives
Looking Through Different Lenses: Multiple Stakeholder Perspectives on ED Performance Measures
The drive to maximize emergency department (ED) operations and ensure the quality of care they deliver has been the focus of experts – not just in the United States, but around the world – for decades. Access to effective and efficient emergency care is critical to a community, and EDs are the safety net that must provide that care whenever it is needed. A well managed ED increases the quality and safety of patient care and strengthens the healthcare infrastructure.
