Chairperson's File
Blog posts from 2024 AHA Board Chair Joanne M. Conroy, M.D., CEO and president of Dartmouth Health, and past chairs.
Overcoming language barriers with patients improves communication, a critical element of safety and quality. To reduce medical errors and improve patient safety, Erlanger Health System in Chattanooga, Tenn., has bolstered its language services program. The health system focused on increasing staff…
Hospitals and health systems are focusing on cultural competence to create an environment and workforce that delivers the highest quality care to every patient regardless of race, ethnicity, culture, or language proficiency. In a recent HPOE webinar, the 2015 AHA Equity of Care Award finalists…
Each year more than one million patients in the United States are diagnosed with sepsis, a condition that has a 28% to 50% mortality rate and is quite costly to treat. Kennedy Health, an integrated health delivery system in New Jersey, has developed a systemwide approach to improve sepsis care and…
In accord with their commitment to equity of care and leadership diversity, hospitals and health systems are focusing on supplier diversity. In 2014, CHRISTUS Health, a Catholic, not-for-profit health system with services in six U.S. states, Mexico and Chile, created a Diversity Supplier Council.…
Baseball managers tinker with team lineups to improve results on the field, and hospitals can do the same with health care teams. At WVU Hospitals, in Morgantown, W.V., physicians and medical residents teamed up to see their patients at the hospital's outpatient clinic, within 7 to 14 days after…
A unique telemedicine consultation between a rural hospital and skilled rehabilitation/nursing facility is dramatically reducing patient readmissions. Atlantic General Hospital, a 62-bed facility in Berlin, Md., discharges many patients to a local, privately owned post-acute care facility. In…
Nine in 10 adults in the community lacked the literacy skills to manage their health and prevent disease. That was the conclusion of staff members from Providence Medical Center in Wayne, Neb, after attending a health literacy summit in 2008. The 25-bed critical access hospital responded by…
More than 90 percent of U.S. hospitals are committed to population health. This is according to a recent survey conducted by the AHA's Health Research & Educational Trust and the Association for Community Health Improvement.
The Hospitals in Pursuit of Excellence website highlights quality improvement stories at hundreds of hospitals and health care systems across the country. These stories describe the results, challenges and lessons learned from successful initiatives to improve operational excellence; population/…
What does it take to be a winner? Children's Hospital Colorado received the 2015 AHA-McKesson Quest for Quality Prize for its work toward achieving the six Institute of Medicine aims for quality care: safe, effective, patient centered, timely, efficient and equitable. Patient safety…