Will Paying Hospitals to Teach Each Other Get Results?

"Part of the role we're being asked to play is to help other healthcare systems understand and adapt the transformation process we've already used in practice," she says.

That's a fancy way of saying that what they do is working, and they want to share it.

The money from the Hospital Engagement Network initiative does not start or stop the work on quality and safety at Ascension, Hendrich is careful to point out. But she's excited because of the quick wins and fast learning that can occur when systems see what has already worked for others in quality and safety improvement.

"This allows us to benefit from the learning of many but also to share our learning with other systems who may be struggling," she says. "One of the characteristics of high-reliability organizations is their deference to expertise. We're not too proud to say we can't always learn from someone else."

Not all the learning will come from big systems to small ones, as you might imagine, given the size of many organizations on the recipient list.

Within Ascension, she notes, sometimes the smaller organizations outperform the larger ones.

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