Diagnostic errors are common and important causes of preventable morbidity and mortality in a variety of medical settings. Diagnostic errors leading to harm are most likely to involve diagnoses of cancer, vascular events, or infection. IHQSE Faculty, Dr. Katie Raffel, along with Sumant Ranji, MD, takes a look at approaches to measurement, etiologies, and interventions to decrease diagnostic error.

IHQSE faculty members, Drs. Emily Gottenborg, Jeff Glasheen, and Tyler Anstett, along with IHQSE alumna Dr. Julia Limes, published the first program evaluation of a residency training program focused on Hospital Medicine. The paper describes the University of Colorado’s experience of training over a hundred hospitalist residents over 15 years. Notably, the program found that graduates were highly likely to choose careers in hospital medicine with over 80% holding quality, safety and operational leadership roles.

Dr. Moksha Patel, IHQSE Lead Physician Informaticist, authored a perspective piece, looking at ways to reimagine the way we measure hospital-provider productivity. This paper focuses on the limitations of traditional measures of hospital-provider value, such as clinical productivity and emphasizes the patient, employee, and institutional outcomes such as quality, safety and experience.

Despite decades of effort to drive quality improvement, many health care organizations still struggle to optimize their performance on quality metrics. The advent of publicly reported quality rankings and ratings allows for greater visibility of overall organizational performance but has not provided a roadmap for sustained improvement in these assessments. In 2012, the Institute for Health care Quality, Safety, and Efficiency was launched, which is an integrated set of quality and safety training programs, with a focus on leadership development and support of performance improvement through data analytics and intensive coaching. After 10 years, the IHQSE has trained nearly 2000 individuals and has been associated with significant improvement in organization-level quality rankings and ratings, offering a framework for organizations seeking systematic, long-term improvement.