VHIG Digest: Vol. 3, No. 6

This Week’s Top 3 Stories in Patient Safety and Quality Improvement in Healthcare By Tim Lockney, School of Medicine, Class of 2013 1. “Global Trigger Tool” Shows Adverse Events May Be 10 Times Greater Than Previously Measured An article published in Health Affairs journal April 2011 used the Institute for Healthcare Improvement’s Global Trigger Tool to...Continue reading

Posted on Tuesday, October 4th, 2011 in Digest, Our Blog and Digest, Uncategorized, Volume 3 | Comments Off

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Watch the Latest VHIG Quarterly Lecture Series Online!

On Monday, September 19th, the Vanderbilt Healthcare Improvement Group (VHIG) hosted its first organizational meeting of the school year with the 2nd session of the VHIG Quarterly Lecture Series introduced last spring. At this session, we were proud to have Jeffrey Hill, MS, speak to the students about patient safety from an aviation perspective. Mr....Continue reading

Posted on Thursday, September 29th, 2011 in Blog, Our Blog and Digest, Uncategorized | Comments Off

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Speaker of the Week for Wednesday, September 28: Julie Morath

Julianne Morath has three decades of executive leadership in healthcare and multiple faculty appointments.  Among her awards, Ms. Morath was the inaugural recipient of the John Eisenberg Award for Individual Lifetime Achievement in Patient Safety, awarded through The Joint Commission and National Quality Forum.  She is currently Chief Quality and Patient Safety Officer for Vanderbilt University Medical Center, Director of...Continue reading

Posted on Tuesday, September 27th, 2011 in Blog, Our Blog and Digest, Speaker of the Week, Uncategorized, Volume 3 | Comments Off

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VHIG Digest: Vol. 3, No. 5

This Week’s Top 3 Stories in Patient Safety and Quality Improvement in Healthcare By Scott Hagan, School of Medicine, Class of 2013 1. Privacy Curtains in Hospital Patient Rooms Carry Dangerous Bacteria In a study with preliminary results presented at the 51st Interscience Conference on Antimicrobial Agents and Chemotherapy, Dr. Michael Ohl and colleagues from the University of Iowa found...Continue reading

Posted on Monday, September 26th, 2011 in Digest, Our Blog and Digest, Volume 3 | Comments Off

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Speaker of the Week for Wednesday, September 21: Dr. Jacob Hathaway

Dr. Hathaway is an assistant professor in the Department of Medicine at Vanderbilt University. A graduate of the Vanderbilt University School of Medicine, Dr. Hathaway completed a quality improvement fellowship at the VA where he currently spends much of his time seeing patients, leading quality improvement initiatives, and teaching current Quality Scholar Fellows. As a...Continue reading

Posted on Monday, September 19th, 2011 in Blog, Our Blog and Digest, Speaker of the Week, Uncategorized | Comments Off

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VHIG Digest: Vol. 3, No. 4

This Week’s Top 3 Stories in Patient Safety and Quality Improvement in Healthcare By Michele Luhm Vigor, School of Medicine, Class of 2014 1. The Joint Commission Names Names: Annual Report on Quality and Safety 2011- 9/13/11 This past week, the nation’s leading hospital accreditation board released their annual report on quality and safety:Improving America’s Hospitals. The reporting...Continue reading

Posted on Monday, September 19th, 2011 in Blog, Our Blog and Digest, Uncategorized, Volume 3 | Comments Off

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Speaker of the Week for Wednesday, September 14: Michael A. Lapré, Drs., Ph.D.

Michael A. Lapré, Drs., Ph.D. E. Bronson Ingram Associate Professor of Operations Management Professor Michael A. Lapré is an internationally known expert on organizational learning curves. He is primarily interested in empirical research on improving organizational performance.  Lapré is an associate editor for Management Science (MS) and a senior editor for Production and Operations Management (POM). Professor Lapré joined the...Continue reading

Posted on Monday, September 12th, 2011 in Blog, Our Blog and Digest, Speaker of the Week | Comments Off

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VHIG Digest: Vol. 3, No. 3

This Week’s Top 3 Stories in Patient Safety and Quality Improvement in Healthcare By Kate Gurba, School of Medicine, Class of 2014 1. Aggressive medical therapy is superior to stenting for treatment of intracranial arterial stenosis – 9/7/11 Fifty institutions participated in a randomized clinical trial to determine optimal treatment for preventing additional strokes in...Continue reading

Posted on Monday, September 12th, 2011 in Digest, Our Blog and Digest, Volume 3 | Comments Off

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Speaker of The Week for August 31, 2011: Dr. Warren Sandeberg

As graduate school has returned to session, we are once again offering the Vanderbilt Healthcare Improvement Group (VHIG) Digest. As you will notice, our Digest has undergone a transformation this year. Given the abundance of healthcare news related to quality improvement and patient safety, our organization felt it appropriate to increase the frequency of our...Continue reading

Posted on Monday, August 29th, 2011 in Blog, Digest, Our Blog and Digest, Uncategorized | Comments Off

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VHIG Digest: Volume 2, No. 8

By Richard J. Clews, 2012, Vanderbilt University School of Nursing In the News… 1. XX-ray: when enough is enough - April 12, 2011 State investigators in New York have found that some X-rays performed at SUNY are still over radiating premature babies after initial reports from the hospital indicated that they had corrected the indiscretion of performing...Continue reading

Posted on Tuesday, May 3rd, 2011 in Digest, Our Blog and Digest, Volume 2 | Comments Off

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VHIG Digest: Volume 2, No. 7

By Kate Gurba, MSTP ’13  In the News… 1. Study finds drop in deadly V.A. hospital infections- 4/13/11 Two articles in the New England Journal of Medicine examined the clinical and financial efficacy of efforts to reduce hospital-acquired infections. Over a span of 32 months, Veterans Affairs hospitals nationwide reduced methicillin-resistant staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) infections by...Continue reading

Posted on Tuesday, April 19th, 2011 in Digest, Our Blog and Digest, Volume 2 | Comments Off

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VHIG Digest: Volume 2, No. 6

By Mike Miles, OGSM (MBA 2012) In the News…  1. Rules Aim to Reshape Medical Practices – WSJ 4/1/2011 The Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) this week released a 429-page document covering the rules for accountable care organizations, how they will share risk with CMS, and how they must report quality of care....Continue reading

Posted on Tuesday, April 5th, 2011 in Digest, Our Blog and Digest, Uncategorized, Volume 2 | Comments Off

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VHIG Digest: Volume 2, No. 5

by Natalie Ausborn, VMS II In the News 1. ICU Central-line Infections Drop Dramatically Nationwide - 3/14/11 The Center for Disease Control and Prevention released a report indicating that U.S. intensive care units reduced central line-associated bloodstream infections by approximately 60% over the past ten years, with an estimate of 27,000 lives saved and $1.8 billion...Continue reading

Posted on Monday, March 28th, 2011 in Digest, Our Blog and Digest, Uncategorized, Volume 2 | Comments Off

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VHIG Digest: Volume 2, No. 4

By Jake McClure, VMS II In the News 1. Wall Street Journal Reports Almost 5% of Americans Report Falling Asleep at the Wheel A March 3rd article in the Wall Street Journal reported a scary statistic regarding Americans and their tendency to fall asleep while driving at the wheel. Based on numbers released by theCDC, of the 74,571 Americans surveyed, 4.7%...Continue reading

Posted on Monday, March 14th, 2011 in Digest, Our Blog and Digest, Volume 2 | Comments Off

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VHIG Digest: Volume 2, No. 3

By Janice Babbs, OGSM II In the News 1. HealthGrades Releases List of Top 50 Cities for Hospital Care HealthGrades, a leading independent healthcare ratings organization, released the first-ever list of America’s Top 50 Cities for hospital care. The rankings are based on a comprehensive study of patient death and complication rates at the nation’s nearly 5,000 hospitals. HealthGradesidentified those...Continue reading

Posted on Tuesday, February 22nd, 2011 in Digest, Our Blog and Digest, Volume 2 | Tags: hospitals, rankings No Comments »

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VHIG Leadership and Projects Meeting, Feb. 17th

By Scott Hagan, VMS II VHIG hosted a successful gathering tonight at the Vanderbilt Owen Graduate School of Management. Our event featured guest speaker Jason Hickok, MBA, RN, who is Vice President of Clinical Improvement for Hospital Corporation of America (HCA). Charged with coordinating the safety initiatives of the largest for-profit hospital chain in the...Continue reading

Posted on Friday, February 18th, 2011 in Blog, Our Blog and Digest | Tags: central line, checklist, patient safety No Comments »

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VHIG wins award from Academy for Healthcare Improvement (AHI) for Quality Improvement Elective

Carol Callaway-Lane, Irving Ye, and Piotr Pilarski receive award from Duncan Neuhaser (right) Last December, the Academy for Healthcare Improvement awarded VHIG for our work in creating the Fundamentals of Quality Improvement Elective, an interdisciplinary elective for management, medical, and nursing students to learn more about basic concepts in quality improvement and patient safety. We felt honored to receive the Duncan Neuhauser Award for Special Recognition for Excellence in a Student-Led Initiative. Click here for more details about our elective.Continue reading

Posted on Wednesday, February 16th, 2011 in Blog, Our Blog and Digest | Tags: awards, elective, patient safety, quality improvement No Comments »

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VHIG Digest: Volume 2, No. 2

By Julie McNeil, OGSM II In the News 1. U.S. House of Representatives Repeals PPACA On Wednesday, January 19, the U.S. House of Representatives voted 245 to 189 to repeal the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA), voting on party lines. Three Democrats joined the unanimous Republican vote: Dan Boren (D-OK), Mike McIntyre (D-NC), and Mike...Continue reading

Posted on Monday, January 24th, 2011 in Digest, Our Blog and Digest, Uncategorized, Volume 2 | No Comments »

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VHIG Digest: Volume 2, No. 1

1. Wall Street Journal investigates controversy over rates of spinal fusion surgery A December 20th article in the Wall Street Journal reported on an unusually high rate of spinal fusion surgeries at Norton Hospital in Louisville, Ky. Five spinal surgeons there contributed to giving Norton the distinction of having the third-highest rate of spinal fusion surgeries of any U.S. hospital. Central to this controversy is that in 2010 these surgeons received over $7 million from Medtronic, Inc, the manufacturer of the spinal fusion device the surgeons used.Spinal fusion surgery, which involves fusing 2 or more vertebrae in patients with significant back pain, is a particularly controversial operation due to limited evidence of its effectiveness, especially as an indication for patients with degenerative disk disease. The article touches on the problem of financial incentives and the extent to which they affect volume of procedures.Continue reading

Posted on Monday, January 10th, 2011 in Digest, Our Blog and Digest, Volume 2 | No Comments »

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Updates from the IHI National Forum, December 5-8, 2010

We recently returned from the IHI National Forum in Orlando, FL and have some great news to share: 1. We made the IHI Annual Report! There is a great spread with a photo of us and article about us in the report, which was under everyone’s seat at the National Forum’s first keynote address. See...Continue reading

Posted on Friday, December 17th, 2010 in Blog, Our Blog and Digest | Tags: elective, IHI Annual Report, IHI Forum No Comments »

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