AHA Quality

Recently, I was surfing the AHA website and noticed they have a great Quality Center to “help hospitals accelerate their quality and performance improvement processes.” It’s loaded with tools and articles to help hospitals achieve better overall service, patient outcomes and performance.

One of the tools that caught my eye was the section of the site that provides “Information resources targeted to each of the Institute of Medicine’s (IOM) ‘Six Quality Aims’ for improving the quality and safety of healthcare.” To achieve better patient safety and initiate change in the healthcare system, the IOM report suggests that health care systems focus on six quality aims: patient safety, patient-centeredness, effectiveness, efficiency, timeliness, and equity. The six quality aims are in a pyramid with patient safety at the base and equity at the top, which implies a layered approach. In other words, if patient safety is not in place, the other layers will be difficult to achieve.

In reading the Six Aims, it occurred to me that HR can play an important role in driving these initiatives. To achieve each one of these aims, hospitals rely on their staff. Staff must not only be qualified and skilled, they also need ongoing training. Just as importantly, they need to be committed and satisfied employees. A system that integrates an organization’s talent management processes (performance appraisals, succession planning, compensation, learning management, multi-rater feedback, etc.) provides the tools for HR departments to lead their facilities’ transformation toward the IOM aims. Broadly speaking, effective talent management systems help hospitals provide better quality patient care.

Over the next few weeks I’ll address each of the Six Aims, patient safety, patient-centeredness, effectiveness, efficiency, timeliness, and equitability, and their relationship to talent management.