Quality Improvement & Patient Safety in Women's Health Care
Look to this page for important resources and announcements of upcoming events designed to help you improve the quality and safety of the midwifery care you provide.
CMS Pay-for-Performance Initiative - As part of the "Tax Relief and Health Care Act of 2006," HR 6111, Congress authorized a 1.5% bonus payment for professionals who submit quality data, beginning July 1, 2007. Certified nurse-midwives are explicitly included in the definition of professionals eligible to participate. Read a detailed summary prepared by Patrick Cooney, ACNM Federal Lobbyist.
The Joint Commission on Accreditation of Healthcare Organizations (JCAHO)2007 National Patient Safety Goals - New goals appear in bold. Goal #13 reflects a philosophy embodied in the midwifery standard of care. Become a leader in patient safety within your institution! Learn more.
The Institute for Healthcare Improvement (IHI)Web&Action online series:Partnering with Patients and Families to Accelerate Improvement. IHI is offering this online series to support organizations seeking to strengthen their partnership with patients and families. This is an area of strength for midwives and presents an opportunity to network with others, and learn the IHI perspective on:
Advantages for the organization when patients and family members are engaged in improvement
The most effective ways to engage patients and families in improvement projects and in the organization
Anticipated barriers and how to address them
How to successfully involve a patient and/or family member in an improvement project team meeting
IHI has offered ACNM members its Special Half-Price Discount Rate. To learn more and enroll, click HERE. For questions about the program or how to enroll, contact Cristina Lang at clang@ihi.org and mention your ACNM membership.
IHI has also launched a collaborative Learning and Innovation Community on Improving Perinatal Care. In this community, teams examine and develop processes that help create a culture of patient safety and reduce birth trauma by implementing reliable, evidence-based treatment plans, as well as improving communication between care teams and families. Midwifery participation is eagerly solicited!
To learn more, please:
Visit IHI's website, where you will find further information about its "Learning and Innovation Community on Improving Perinatal Care," the areas of focus and aims of this project, and how to join (ACNM members may qualify for the half-price membership fee available to small practices or community health sites).
Test IHI's Perinatal Trigger Tool in your organization. The packet includes guidelines for reviewers and definitions of harm, as well as applies the NCC Merp Index to classify adverse events.
Review IHI's Change Concepts and Testable Ideas, which members of this Perinatal Care Community are applying within their current environment. This document is a blueprint to identify key areas to focus on to improve the reliable delivery of Perinatal Care.
The Commonwealth Fund National Scorecard on US Health System Performance - Created by the Commonwealth Fund Commission on a High Performance Health System, the National Scorecard on US Health System Performance is the first-ever comprehensive means of measuring and monitoring health care outcomes, quality, access, efficiency, and equity in one report. Sadly, the report underscores major deficits in the performance of the US health system. Among its major findings, the US infant mortality rate is 7.0 deaths for 1,000 live births, compared with 2.7 in the top three countries. Learn more.
The Centers for Disease Control (CDC) National Center for Health Statistics(NCHS). Visit this site for a CDC fact sheet summarizing NCHS data and key finding on Patient Safety. This resource also provides a link to the National Vital Statistics System, which collects information such as birth and death certificates from all 50 states and the District of Columbia. Click here to view the Preliminary Birth Data for 2005.
The Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ)
AHRQ manages an online National Patient Safety Network, a comprehensive web resource for providers and patients, providing a collection of selected patient safety news, literature, tools and resources.
Quality indicators are measures that focus on healthcare processes, structures, or outcomes and help to indicate the quality of healthcare. This information can be used to improve care and to prevent adverse outcomes. AHRQ compiles indicators derived from common hospital administrative data. Included in AHRQ's patient safety indicators are national hospital data on birth and obstetric trauma.
