CURRENT RESEARCH AND NEWS

HRET Receives Funding to Further Promote HIV Screening

HRET has been awarded a cooperative agreement for $300,753 from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to continue providing education to hospitals on implementing HIV screening in labor and delivery units and the emergency department. The project will provide workshops on preventing mother-to-child transmission and expand the existing online resource "HIV Testing in Emergency Departments: A Practical Guide." Staff will also interview medical chiefs, nursing chiefs, laboratory directors, and health department officials to inform the CDC's development of a similar guide for inpatient settings. Frances Margolin, HRET vice president, operations, is the principal investigator. For more information on the project, click here.

HRET Launches Two New Studies on Hospital Quality

HRET has received a $180,000 grant from the Commonwealth Fund to study the impact of Medicare's new payment policy for certain hospital-acquired conditions (HACs). Beginning October 1, Medicare will no longer reimburse hospitals for the added cost of care for 12 "reasonably preventable" conditions acquired after a patient was admitted to the hospital. HRET will explore the incidence of HACs across different types of hospitals through analysis of Medicare claims data, and determine the greatest opportunities for improvement. Additionally, HRET will conduct interviews with 90 hospitals to gather information on whether and how they are responding to the policy. Megan McHugh, PhD, director of research at HRET, is the principal investigator.

The Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) has given HRET a $350,000 contract to examine the link between human resource practices and quality in health care. In partnership with The Ohio State University, Rush University Medical Center and the AHA's American Society for Healthcare Human Resources Administration (ASHHRA), HRET will identify human resource practices with the potential for enhancing safety and quality in health care, and conduct case studies of successful applications of the practices. The study team will develop recommendations for implementing the human resource practices within interested health care organizations. Megan McHugh, HRET director of research, is the co-principal investigator.

Robert Brook Honored at TRUST Award Reception

Al Stubblefield, Janet Corrigan, Robert Brook, and John Combes at the TRUST Award reception.

Robert Brook, MD, ScD, FACP, vice president at RAND Corporation and director of RAND Health, was honored July 24, 2008, in San Diego as the 2008 TRUST Award recipient. In his remarks, Dr. Brook stressed the importance of comprehensive health care reform, which he said should cover seven main areas including ensuring appropriateness of all surgical decisions, making sure e-prescribing systems detect underuse of chronic disease medications, incentivizing providers and hospitals to implement real-time and comprehensive computerized medical record systems, and requiring an annual, clinically detailed national report on quality from the U.S. government. Dr. Brook discusses these recommendations for OutBox in the September issue of Hospitals & Health Networks. Click here to read his OutBox column. To view photos from the award reception, click here.

UPCOMING EVENTS AND ANNOUNCEMENTS

Register for HSR E-Alerts

Sign up to receive easy-to-read e-mails with live links to must-have article abstracts and listings from Health Services Research (HSR). You will be notified of new HSR articles as they are published. Go to www.blackwellpublishing.com/hsr.

ACHI Audioconference on Community Benefit and Strategic Planning

Join ACHI for the audioconference "Integrating Community Benefit into Hospital Strategic Planning, Part I" on Thursday, September 18, at 1:00-2:00 p.m. CT (11:00-12:00 PT, 12:00-1:00 MT, 2:00-3:00 ET). Keith Hearle, president, Verité Healthcare Consulting, LLC, in Raleigh, NC, will discuss how organizations can better integrate community benefit and strategic planning by identifying historical barriers to integrated planning and envisioning a community-based strategic plan. Session details and registration can be found here.

ACHI Audioconference on Youth Diabetes

Join ACHI for the audioconference "ENERGIZE! - An Innovative Approach to Youth Diabetes Screening and Prevention" on Thursday, October 16, at 1:00-2:00 p.m. CT (11:00-12:00 PT, 12:00-1:00 MT, 2:00-3:00 ET). Mark Piehl, MD, MPH, FAAP, medical director of WakeMed Children's Diabetes and Endocrinology Program, and Julie Paul, MS, RD, LDN, CDE, program coordinator at WakeMed Children's Diabetes and Endocrinology Program, both in Raleigh, NC, will talk about the WakeMed Health and Hospitals Pediatric Diabetes and Endocrinology Program (PDP). The program provides community-wide screening for diabetes through local public health clinics and physicians' offices in conjunction with an extensive healthy lifestyle intervention for youth ages 6-18 who have diabetes or are at high risk for developing diabetes. ENERGIZE! is a 2008 AHA NOVA Award winner, as well as a participant in HRET's Youth Obesity Learning Collaborative.

CENTER FOR HEALTH MANAGEMENT RESEARCH

New Report Now Available From CHMR

A new report, "Improving Quality of Care and Reducing Health Care Disparities," is now available on the Web site of the Center for Health Management Research (CHMR), an HRET research network. The report by lead author Romana Hasnain-Wynia, PhD, describes a framework for detecting, understanding, and reducing health care disparities. It also discusses collecting patient demographic data and linking the data to quality of care measures. Dr. Hasnain-Wynia and her team at HRET developed the HRET Disparities Toolkit for collecting race, ethnicity, and primary language information from patients. The toolkit has been proposed for endorsement by the National Quality Forum.

Join CHMR

CHMR is a unique collaboration of hospital and health system leaders and outstanding academic researchers working to identify and investigate topics on improving the quality and effectiveness of health services delivery and management and produce actionable research. For more information, visit the CHMR Web site or contact Nadine Caputo at ncaputo@aha.org or 312-422-2629, or Debbie Pierce at dpierce@aha.org or 312-422-2635.

RECENT ARTICLES AND PUBLICATIONS

FREE HSR Article Access

In each issue of Health Services Research, editors Ann Barry Flood and José J. Escarce select an article for complimentary online access. The August issue selection, "Are Family Physicians Good for You? Endogenous Doctor Supply and Individual Health," investigates the impact of family physician supply on individual health. To view the full article, click here.

H&HN Online: Reducing Our Environmental Footprint

The August 5, 2008, issue of H&HN Online featured the article "Reducing Our Environmental Footprint" by Michael Bilton, vice president, education, HRET, as well as Patti Costello of ASHES, Deborah Sprindzunas of AHRMM, and Dale Woodin of ASHE. The article outlines steps that hospitals and health systems can take to become "environmentally sustainable" in five key areas. To read the full article, click here.