Joint Commission journal on quality and patient safety / Joint Commission Resources
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Jt Comm J Qual Patient Saf · Feb 2012
Ongoing professional performance evaluation (OPPE) using automatically captured electronic anesthesia data.
The Massachusetts General Hospital (Boston), a large academic center providing anesthesia services for more than 49,000 procedures each year, created an Ongoing Professional Practice Evaluation (OPPE) process that could use readily available, automatically captured electronic information from its vendor-provided anesthesia information management system. ⋯ A novel, automated, and continuous reporting system for physician credentialing that uses the existing clinical information system infrastructure can serve as a key element of a comprehensive clinical performance evaluation that measures both technical and generalizable clinical skill sets. It is not intended to provide a complete system for measuring competence but rather to serve as a first-round warning mechanism and metric scoring tool to identify problems and potential performance noncompliance issues.
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Jt Comm J Qual Patient Saf · Feb 2012
Improving venous thromboembolism prevention processes and outcomes at a community hospital.
Venous thromboembolism (VTE) is a cause of significant morbidity and mortality in hospitalized patients in the United States. Quality improvement (QI) strategies to increase the rates of prophylaxis in patients at-risk for VTE have been shown to be successful. The development of a formal, active strategy addressing the prevention of VTE, as a written, institutionwide VTE prophylaxis policy, presents a challenge for hospitals ⋯ Keys to the success of this QI program included leveraging multidisciplinary VTE committee members, physician champions, multiple approaches to communication and education, and providing evidence to support the changes. Sharing the hospital's QI process may provide a model for other hospitals challenged with developing and sustaining positive outcomes in patients at risk for VTE.