Update on goals for national leadership in patient safety and quality

Dear Colleagues,

One year ago, we announced an ambitious goal: for the Johns Hopkins Health System to demonstrate national leadership in patient safety and quality.  

This bold decision by a group of trustees and leaders from across Johns Hopkins Medicine resulted in a system-wide commitment to meet specific goals to ensure our patients always receive the excellent care they deserve. In addition to goals to improve hand hygiene compliance and reduce harmful ICU-acquired infections, we committed to achieve 96 percent compliance in core measures across five hospitals within 18 months. Core measures are standardized best practices that all U.S. hospitals must report their compliance with to the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, such as prompt administration of aspirin to heart attack patients and proper care of children suffering from asthma.

With the bar set exceptionally high, nearly 40 workgroups were formed and led by clinical teams to focus on select core measures that were below target across five hospitals—The Johns Hopkins Hospital, Johns Hopkins Bayview Medical Center, Howard County General Hospital, Sibley Memorial Hospital and Suburban Hospital.

Over the past year, these multidisciplinary teams dedicated a significant amount of time to developing and implementing interventions and accountability plans and streamlining processes to improve quality. The Armstrong Institute supported local teams by sharing lessons learned and best practices from across the system, developing an accountability model to communicate areas needing improvement to quality leaders, and pairing a faculty member and quality coach with each workgroup.

As a result of such efforts, detailed in Dome this month, we are thrilled to announce the health system exceeded its goal of 96 percent compliance for seven of nine targeted core measures related to heart attack, heart failure, pneumonia, surgical care and children's asthma care. For 2013, the system is also on track to meet the goal for the final two measures, both related to immunization. Hopkins Hospital, Howard County General Hospital, Sibley Memorial Hospital and Suburban Hospital all recently received the 2013 Excellence Award for Quality Improvement in Hospitals from the Delmarva Foundation for their improved performance in core measures.

Congratulations to each of you on this tremendous achievement. Our successes clearly demonstrate our collective commitment to provide our patients with the best care. We thank everyone in our academic and community hospitals, including the workgroups, our faculty, private practice physicians, nurses, administrators and all of the staff, as well as the Armstrong Institute, for making this possible.

There is still much more work to be done, and we need your help. To reach our goal, we must continue to:

• Improve and sustain our performance by ensuring that all staff know and commit to meeting system goals. For Hopkins and our patients to thrive, we all must commit to improvement. This is especially important as external agencies are adding new measures in the coming months.
• Build organizational capacity for quality improvement by providing health care professionals with the training and resources they need to succeed.
• Ensure transparency and accountability at every level, from local units to hospitals to the entire Johns Hopkins Health System. While performance data is currently shared by unit, in the near future this will be consolidated into an automated system-wide quality and safety dashboard available to all employees.
• Advance the science of safety and quality through continued efforts to learn what works and what does not.

We are confident that together, we can continue to improve patient safety, quality and the value of care for years to come. Thank you for your continued efforts in demonstrating that we are a true national leader.

Sincerely,

Paul B. Rothman, M.D.
Dean of the Medical Faculty
CEO, Johns Hopkins Medicine

Ronald R. Peterson
President, The Johns Hopkins Hospital and Health System
EVP, Johns Hopkins Medicine

Peter J. Pronovost
Director, Armstrong Institute for Patient Safety and Quality
Senior Vice President for Patient Safety and Quality, Johns Hopkins Medicine

Judy A. Reitz
Vice President for Quality Improvement, Johns Hopkins Medicine
Vice President of Operations Integration, Johns Hopkins Health System
Executive Vice President and Chief Operating Officer, The Johns Hopkins Hospital

Richard G. Bennett
President, Johns Hopkins Bayview Medical Center 

Vic A. Broccolino
President and CEO, Howard County General Hospital

Gene E. Green
President, Suburban Hospital 

Richard "Chip" O. Davis
President, Sibley Memorial Hospital