July 2018
Welcome to our True North e-newsletter, which is designed to provide our physicians and AHPs a better vehicle to share information about UCSF Health improvement activities, upcoming events, and perhaps other objectives based on your continued feedback .
What is “True North” and why is it important?
True North  pillars represent our long-term objectives –  what we need to accomplish to achieve our vision -  because they serve as a constant guide for aligning and prioritizing our work. The UCSF Health True North pillars should not surprise you. In fact, we hope the areas of patient experience, quality and safety, our people, financial strength, strategic growth and learning health system reflect active improvement efforts you’ve participated in or have observed in your practice settings. The True North pillars are also important since they serve as a communication vehicle and common language to link our daily work to what's important in allowing us to continually become better versions of ourselves.
How are we doing with our True North metrics?
Please review our  current   True North scorecard that continues to serve as one lens into our organizational priorities and performance. This month's communication focuses on our evolving mortality review processes and our approach to workplace injuries.
In addition to our focus on Mortality O/E, how do we learn and improve from the care we deliver?

It's critical that our clinical services who best understand their patients, disease states and local care delivery processes continually learn from and improve the care we provide. Over the past year, we developed and implemented a secure web-based platform that allows clinical departments to conduct and track their Morbidity & Mortality (M&M) reviews. The new eM&M system is now live across departments (more than 50 services) with nearly 3000 cases reviewed. Optimization of the workflows, standardization of the tool, and creation of more meaningful triggers for review have been part of the iterative improvements in working with the different physician quality leaders. We've created an FAQ guide for M&M and an e-learning module (search for "eM&M") that are designed to support providers and trainees in the process. They're all accessible directly from the eM&M site.

Finally, we're also piloting a new mortality review process to further leverage the e-M&M platform; the new effort is a real-time review that can rapidly identify system issues and cases that require further review (or not). Frontline providers involved in the case receive an email with a link to a brief mortality review form . Provider feedback has been very positive to date. This process streamlines our previous approach and eliminates significant time delays, facilitates communication across different committees or groups reviewing the same case, and relies upon timely input from those directly involved in patient care. The response rate has been high and provider feedback has been very positive to date. More to come as we learn and improve the process.
How are we doing with our harm events related to workplace injuries?

While we've focused previous communications around our patient harms, our Zero Harm initiative also focuses on workplace injuries that impact all of us. Over the past year, our teams from environmental safety, occupational health and workers compensation have worked tirelessly to achieve ~10% reduction in events. Their approach is similar to what our other harm metric owners have demonstrated for success: a collaborative and multidisciplinary team, identifying at-risk setting and behaviors, close to real-time huddles after an event to understand root causes, and a data-driven improvement strategy. In fact, our UCSF Health teams were recognized in June with 2017 University of California President’s Award for Health System Excellence in Environmental Health and Safety. The award is based on having the lowest total claim incident rate (claims per 100 FTE) out of all the UC Hospitals during 2017.
News & Announcements
Benioff Children's Hospitals Recognized
UCSF Benioff Children's Hospitals rank among the nation's top-tier medical centers, according to the recently released U.S News & World Report's annual survey for 2018-19. While it's only one way our children's health is evaluated across our San Francisco and Oakland campuses, the recognition reinforces the national reputation that our providers have established in treating children with the most challenging diagnoses. Please see the full story here . The new adult hospital rankings will be released in mid-August.
Congratulations to our Exceptional Physician & AHP Award Winners
Each year, UCSF Medical Center recognizes exceptional physicians and AHPs, an incredibly challenging selection process from the large number of deserving nominations received. This year, the following physicians were awarded: Jennifer Babik (Department of Medicine), Katherine Brown (Department of Obstetrics, Gynecology and Reproductive Services), Spencer Lake (Department of Radiology), Hung Nguyen (Department of Anesthesia), Daniel Null (Department of Medicine), Benjamin Padilla (Department of Surgery), Elizabeth Rogers (Department of Pediatrics), and Emma Samelson-Jones (Department of Psychiatry). The AHPs recognized were Eliana Agudelo, PA (Liver Transplant) and Elizabeth Colglazier, NP (Pediatric Pulmonary Hypertension). Please congratulate them for their outstanding contributions to patient care and modeling our PRIDE values .
Leadership Development Opportunity
Looking to develop your leadership skills? The Healthforce Center at UCSF is an expert in leadership development programs and now offering a new short and intensive program designed to meet the needs for busy, clinically trained faculty. Please review the flyer if you're interested as the application deadline for the first cohort is July 11.