Multifocal Clinical Performance Improvement Across 21 Hospitals

"Improving quality and safety across an entire healthcare system in multiple clinical areas within a short time frame is challenging. We describe our experience with improving inpatient quality and safety at Kaiser Permanente Northern California."

Multifocal Clinical Performance Improvement Across 21 Hospitals
Crawford, Barbara; Skeath, Melinda; Whippy, Alan
Journal For Healthcare Quality, 2015 - 37(2), pp. 117–125

Read more here.

2013 Cost trends report: Commonwealth of Massachusetts

"To identify potential opportunities for savings in Massachusetts, we reviewed three cost drivers in depth: hospital operating expenses, wasteful spending, and high-cost patients." 

2013 Cost trends report 
Commonwealth of Massachusetts, Health Policy Commission

Read more here.

Avoiding low-value care (video)

"The enormous cost of health care in the United States, driven in part by the fee-for-service payment system, has inspired new efforts to assess the true value of commonly provided services. When a service is widely recognized as providing little or no benefit, what should be done to reduce its use?"

Perspective roundtable: avoiding low-value care
AA Gawande, CH Colla, SD Halpern, BE Landon
New England Journal of Medicine, 2014, 370: e21

Watch the video discussion here.

Accountable care organisations: Testing, evaluating and learning what works

"Now more than ever the NHS needs to be able to innovate at scale and pace and testing out a variety of ways of integrating care should be encouraged."

Accountable care organisations in the United States and England: Testing, evaluating and learning what works
Stephen Shortell, Rachael Addicott, Nicola Walsh, Chris Ham
The King's Fund
March 2014

Read more here.

Comparing in-person and webinar delivery of an immunization quality improvement program

"In-person and webinar delivery modes were both well received, but webinar AFIX consultations cost substantially less. Interactive webinar delivery shows promise for considerably extending the reach of immunization quality improvement programs."

Comparing in-person and webinar delivery of an immunization quality improvement program: a process evaluation of the adolescent AFIX trial
MB Gilkey, JL Moss, AJ Roberts, AM Dayton, AH Grimshaw, NT Brewer
Implementation Science, 2014, 9:21

Read more here.

High-Impact Leadership

"There is solid evidence that leadership engagement and focus drives improvements in health care quality and reduces patient harm.  Leaders at all levels in care delivery organizations are struggling with how to focus their leadership efforts and achieve Triple Aim results for the populations they serve." 

High-Impact Leadership: Improve Care, Improve the Health of Populations, and Reduce Costs (IHI White Paper)

S Swensen, M Pugh, C McMullan, A Kabcenell
Cambridge, Massachusetts: Institute for Healthcare Improvement
2013

Read more here (you will need to login/freely register to access this report).

The performance improvement imperative

"Improving care for the chronically ill is just one of many steps required to lower national health spending and bring about the dramatic change needed in the way health care is organized and provided."

The performance improvement imperative: utilizing a coordinated, community-based approach to enhance care and lower costs for chronically ill patients
The Commonwealth Fund Commission on a High Performance Health System
April 2012

Read more here.

Scorecard on local health system performance

"The first-ever Scorecard on Local Health System Performance provides U.S. communities with comparative data to assess the performance of their health care systems, establish priorities for improvement, and set achievement targets."

Rising to the challenge: results from a scorecard on local health system performance
The Commonwealth Fund
March 2012

Read more here.