A group of leaders is getting started on a year-long effort to find a new owner for the struggling Prince George's County (MD) hospital system. Kenneth E. Glover, the man chosen as chairman of the state-created authority, has three decades of experience engineering big deals—but this could be one of the hardest. The next hurdle is waiting for the state and the county to finish negotiating how much both are willing to pony up to coax a business or consortium into bidding for parts or all of the system. The system consists of Prince George's Hospital Center, Laurel Regional Hospital, Bowie Health Campus and two nursing homes.
Latinos are the fastest-growing population group in Montgomery County, MD, and more needs to be done to boost their health and well-being, according to a report. Improvements include more access to medical care and expanding transportation and bilingual services, the report's authors state. The report added that estimates from 2005 suggest that more than 50% of Latinos in the county are uninsured, and about half do not have a primary-care doctor. Among Latinos who had not seen a doctor in the past year, the primary reason was the high cost of care, according to the report.
The Pennsylvania Health Care Cost Containment Council (PHC4) could soon cease to exist, if state lawmakers don't extend its authorization by the end of the month. Although the watchdog agency has strong support in the state's General Assembly, some insurance lobbyists contend PHC4 has failed in its mission to contain costs because healthcare costs continue to rise.
A patient safety bill agreement announced this week by New York Gov. David A. Paterson now requires the names of doctors charged with misconduct to be made public. Also, these physicians now will be given just one day from the time formal charges are made to provide office records to investigators. The bill was created in response to the case of a Long Island doctor who put patients' lives in danger by practicing improper infection control.
A recent HealthGrades study has found that best-performing hospitals offer higher quality of maternity and cardiovascular care for women than poor-performing hospitals. The study shows that top-performing hospitals report much fewer maternal complications than lower-performing facilities, and that mortality rates for women treated for cardiovascular disease have dropped in recent years.
Nebulous. That's how Eric Dobkin, MD, chief quality officer at Crozer-Keystone Health System describes the responsibilities of a hospital quality officer in this month's HealthLeaders magazine.
Infection control, clinical outcomes, and compliance with The Joint Commissions' standards are common tasks assigned to a quality officer, but often, the responsibilities don't end there. CQOs hear about it when the hospital noise level is too loud or the cleaning staff misses a spot on the hallway floor.
"You could make the argument that quality should only be measured by the outcomes required, or you can look at the food served in the cafeteria," says Dobkin, who also serves as the vice president of patient safety for the five hospital system in Delaware County, PA. "They all fall into the rubric of quality."
While the role may be nebulous, the growing importance of hospital quality isn't, evidenced by the number of hospitals—big and small—that are bringing quality responsibilities to the executive table by creating the chief quality officer role.
"Patients, regulatory agencies, the government—they're all demanding quality, says Beka Warren, RN, chief quality officer at The Memorial Hospital in Craig, CO. "In the past, what has been important to the board of trustees is the financial component. If we were doing well financially, we were considered to be doing well. [Today] in this hospital, we look very much at the quality things that are going on."
And just as a CEO has a chief executive who deals with the financial, he or she also should have an executive to oversee quality. But appointing just anyone to the position is ill-advised, Dobkin and Warren say. To be a good CQO, a person must work well with numbers, make sense of statistics, and be optimistic. They must always strive for excellence and be able to lead, even when they encounter resistance.
"It's your job to inspire a hospital to more than what's easy," Dobkin says. "Part of a CQOs job is to educate everyone—from the board to the C-suite to the staff level—about what quality and patient safety are all about."
But perhaps the most important thing that a CEO should remember when hiring a quality officer is that assigning an executive to oversee quality doesn't mean he or she can wash her hands of that responsibility. At The Memorial Hospital, CEO George Rohrich makes daily rounds and meets with his executive team to discuss what he observes on these rounds. He remains on the front lines of the 25-bed hospital's quality improvement efforts, and talks about it often with staff at all levels.
There’s no question that quality is important to him, Warren says, and his emphasis shows the importance of it.
Maureen Larkin is quality editor with HealthLeaders magazine. She can be reached at mlarkin@healthleadersmedia.com.
Note: You can sign up to receive HealthLeaders Media QualityLeaders, a free weekly e-newsletter that reports on the top quality issues facing healthcare leaders.