Highlighting innovations in health care quality at NAPH member hospitals - January 19, 2011

NAPH member hospitals and health systems are known for innovating ways to improve quality and safety for their community, as well as for developing new delivery and payment models of care for vulnerable patient populations with limited resources. Every two weeks, we will be highlighting two new replicable innovations that have improved care delivery and quality at NAPH member hospitals.

Highlighted innovations:

• The use of discrete-event simulation allowed the University of Kentucky’s Chandler Hospital to gain a better understanding of the relationship between optimal emergency department flow, staffing level configurations and availability of necessary resources.
• Harborview Medical Center improved the identification of hospitalized patients with heart failure in real time from 83% to 100% in only a year and a half, improving the hospital’s performance on heart failure core measures.