In a recent interview, Gregory Johnson, MD, CMO of UnityPoint Health, shared his health system's approach to achieving high-quality care.
To promote high quality care, Johnson says, UnityPoint has gone from focusing on more than 140 quality measures to concentrating on 26 metrics.
"One of the things that we recognized for our overall quality program is getting away from a focus on many metrics because so many people were getting thrown various metrics at various times," he says. "By keeping it simple, reporting it consistently, and having structures such as market performance reviews and service line clinical reviews, in each of those cases everybody is focused on the same items so that we can row in the same direction."
Johnson says the two dozen quality measures that UnityPoint is focusing on are similar to the top quality metrics at other health systems. These include length of stay, mortality, hospital-acquired infections, and hospital-acquired conditions.
In addition to taking a simplified approach, here are Johnson's tips for promoting quality at health systems.
Christopher Cheney is the CMO editor at HealthLeaders.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
UnityPoint Health has gone from focusing on more than 140 quality measures to concentrating on 26 metrics.
Hospital readmissions are a key quality metric in part because they impact patient experience.