Quality in the Halls

Beyond the monthly or quarterly Quality Improvement meetings where we show up to either strut our collective performance achievements or gingerly release the tale of woe that befell our beleaguered improvement projects, are the real champions of quality. These are the people who are your front lines and actually reveal to you the substance of your quality initiatives. Take a look at the blog post by Robert Lloyd, Executive Director of Performance Improvement at the Institute for Healthcare Improvement. It’s been my experience that most people who find a folder misfiled and refile it correctly, notice that storage is being utilized for a purpose other than that for which it was intended and help to find a solution, or review their documentation one more time for a code they participated in to assure complete accuracy, do these things because it’s their nature. They want to leave something better than how they found it, and quality is at the heart of their work ethic.

It has also been my experience that even people like this can become disheartened when quality is merely a four-walled room and a monthly meeting. In Lloyd’s post, he tells about the CEO who, upon learning that there was a shortage in the ER Department, went down and started registering patients and even transporting them in wheelchairs to their next destination. The people who reflect the culture of quality in your hospital are beacons of care and commitment in their own right, most likely. But, with leadership such as the ER-working CEO who demonstrates a walking-the-walk focus on every person doing quality, there will be a rise in dedication to quality that is widespread, enthusiastic, and positively infectious!

2014 Texas CAH Conference & Tradeshow

The Prista team is looking forward to attending and exhibiting at this year’s Texas CAH Critical Access Hospital Conference & Tradeshow.

The 2014 CAH Conference & Tradeshow, hosted by TORCH (http://www.torchnet.org) at the Hyatt Regency Lost Pines Resort in Cedar Creek, Texas, June 25-26, includes two days of networking, sessions, a trade exhibit hall, and is the only educational and networking event of its kind for CAHs in Texas.

Great speakers.

For our part, Prista will be in attendance to listen to David Pearson, MPA FACHE, President/CEO of TORCH, who is scheduled to speak on advocacy issues facing CAH facilities; and to hear Brad Denton, Director, Texas State Office of Rural Health (SORH) provide updates on the Medicare Rural Hospital Flexibility (FLEX) Program, and to stay up-to-date on Meaningful Use requirements.

We will also be showcasing our flagship healthcare online application, ActionCue® Clinical Intelligence, a patient safety software, helping hospitals around the country to reduce costs and improve patient care through an insightful, integrated Quality Management, Incident Reporting, and Performance Improvement platform.

Come see us!

If you are planning to attend the 2014 CAH Conference & Tradeshow, drop by our booth and learn more about the ActionCue Clinical Intelligence application. You can register online for the 2014 Texas CAH Conference & Tradeshow on the TORCH.org site, or download the registration form and mail it in. Click here for PDF of the program agenda. Find out how ActionCue Clinical Intelligence can improve your hospital’s patient safety and dramatically reduce adverse incidents; saving your organization hundreds of thousands of dollars.

Not planning to attend?

Learn about ActionCue® Clinical Intelligence by visiting our website at PristaCorp.com.

Hospital CEO Turnover – lack of tools for a key responsibility ?

Hospital CEO Turnover – lack of tools for a key responsibility ?

A recent article in Hospital Dive “Hospital CEO turnover: A symptom of a greater sickness?“, touched on some real problems that are actually somewhat peripheral to the CEO’s core functioning – including pressure from investors and payors and the general and historical challenges in IT for healthcare.

Obviously the most proximate and impactful measure of a CEO’s success is institutional financial success. However, that is merely the scoreboard for the functional and operational success of what hospitals and other healthcare delivery organizations do — deliver healthcare. Patient care quality is inescapably foundational to the operational and financial goals of any CEO of a healthcare delivery organization (HCDO).  More and more, regulations, practices and thinking in healthcare are holding CEOs directly responsible for patient care quality.  It is no longer sufficient to simply meet the mandates of external reporting, as delegated to mid-management specialists. As almost all other industries have embraced, hospital CEOs are needing to stay on top of “the numbers” or metrics of functional performance — preferably in, or near, real-time. This is the only way for a hospital CEO to not only drive patient care improvement but demonstrate her/his effectiveness at doing so.

The age-old methods and practices for managing Quality — largely paper, Excel spreadsheets or rudimentary systems for boffins and data analysts — simply do not cut it for regular use by CEOs. Queries, jotted notes, desktop calculations and raw data are not actionable or useful items alone. What the CEO needs is INSIGHT.

Insight (the highest order of the evolution of information) informs someone what he or she needs to do.  Simply passing responsibility for all of the queries, data manipulation, filtering and analysis off to subordinates fails to solve the real issue of involving the CEO in the work of driving improvement.  Advanced techniques in business intelligence, or BI, as used in other industries,  include normalizing,  compounding and distilling a lot of data into critical insights that a CEO can internalize in 10 minutes instead of four mind-numbing hours in a governing board meeting.  When a platform can do that, and be used by executives and clinical managers, the organization gains a whole new paradigm for managing clinical care quality which coalesces into a “culture of quality” that has staying power.

It was for this purpose that ActionCue Clinical Intelligence was created, and is steadily evolving.  We at Prista call the ability of the CEO, with the use of the ActionCue platform, to find out in 10 minutes exactly where performance issues exist within the entire clinical operation and what the organization is doing to correct them, the Fast Path to Insight™.

To learn how you can gain meaningful insight and quickly begin to improve your patient care, call today to request a short demonstration and find out how the ActionCue Clinical Intelligence software will work for you and your organization.

Prista is hosting a Social-Hour networking event, and we thought of you!

Join Prista to talk about better healthcare quality

You’re Invited!

Please RSVP to join us for snacks, drinks and great conversation.

We had a terrific time at last year’s conference, and are excited to be attending and participating as an exhibitor again. It’s already shaping up to be a great gathering, with over 370 healthcare professionals from across Nebraska coming to learn and network. Be sure to RSVP today to get event updates.

You won’t want to miss out.

ActionCue® Clinical Intelligence application receiving key update

Prista Corporation’s ActionCue® Clinical Intelligence application receiving key update

Austin, Texas – Prista Corporation announced today plans to expand the features of their online application, ActionCue® Clinical Intelligence, to include Common Format report functionality — satisfying AHRQ Common Format report requirements.  This addition extends the scope of coverage of the ActionCue platform integrating Quality Management, Risk Management and Performance Improvement.

The upcoming release, which is planned for early- to mid-summer, continues the company’s commitment to providing unparalleled assistance to hospitals, ambulatory surgical centers (ASCs) and post-acute facilities to improve patient care quality and safety.

“We carefully considered how to best serve clients’ external reporting needs on adverse incident reports to Patient Safety Organizations and onward to various Federal agencies,” said Don Jarrell, EVP of Product and Technical Operations & co-founder of Prista. “It is extremely important to us that we continue to add to the value of the ActionCue application, while maintaining its already high standards for delivering clinical insight in a way that is clear and easy to use.”

The ActionCue application’s ability to provide AHRQ Common Format reports, in either encrypted PDF or direct online transfers, will apply to any Patient Safety Organization (PSO) or recipient the ActionCue subscriber chooses. “Subscribers already have unparalleled flexibility in creating customized reports for internal and external stakeholders,” said Mark Smith, CEO. “With this new functionality, the ActionCue application will be able to maintain its ease of use and productivity, while allowing for reporting that fully complies with the AHRQ requirements with no additional effort for users — it’s really powerful.”

“Since its founding in 2009, Prista has been committed to delivering the best insight into the healthcare and quality operational environment and best practices in information processing through ActionCue Clinical Intelligence,” continued Smith. “With a 100% customer retention rate so far, we think we are on the right path.”

When asked if Prista would be operating as a Patient Safety Organization, Prista’s Don Jarrell said, “No. We have no interest in functioning as a PSO. I believe it could complicate the relationships with our subscribers. What we want to continue doing is to provide hospitals with the best, state-of-the-art tools possible to help them increase their patient safety and care.”