View as Webpage

August 2019

True North Newsletter Monthly highlights of our improvement activities

What is "True North" and why is it important? Please read here to learn more.

Achieving Our True North

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 closing the books for FY19, reflecting back, and then moving forward.

There is a lot of "pending" on this month's True North Scorecard. Why? One challenge with our TN scorecard is that the metrics lag to varying extents. While our harm events, finances and volume reflect the previous month, other metrics (e.g., mortality, sepsis, readmissions) are 2-3 months in the rear. We also just closed our fiscal calendar (July 2018-June 2019) so finalizing year-end data takes more effort than simply closing the books on a given month. Over the next month, you will receive a broader communication about our FY19 organizational IAP goal performance and plans for next year.

How are we planning for the year ahead? The summer should provide all of us time to reflect on what we've accomplished in the past year, recognize colleagues and teams for their remarkable improvement work, and assure that we're still focusing on the right problems. While the metrics on our TN scorecard continue to help us organize teams, work and resources around important problems, we're actively reviewing what new areas would benefit from greater visibility, such as our focus on health equity.

News and Announcements

U.S. News Adult Hospital Rankings Released By now, you've heard the news about our #7 ranking overall and with ten of our specialties ranked in the top 10; it's certainly cause for celebration and recognition of the care we provide. We've developed an executive summary of our rankings and the methodology behind them if you're interested to learn more. As the methodology continues to shift away from reputation and towards more data-driven metrics, our True North focus on improving mortality, readmissions, length of stay, and patient experience also help influence the growing number of external ranking bodies that evaluate the care we provide.

Opioid Stewardship Initiative: What's our current state? The burning platform to care for patients with opioid use disorders, and support our providers and teams in caring for them, is a continued priority. At this month's Quality Improvement Executive Committee (QIEC), we provided an update about the current status around previously communicated priorities. New APeX tools, data registries, clinical order sets, and best practices will continue spreading in the coming year.  

Substance Use Disorders: A Needs Assessment Over the past year, we've conducted a comprehensive needs assessment around our ability to provide the highest-quality care to patients with substance use disorders (SUD). The summary was also presented at QIEC this month, which included a series of recommendations focused on decreasing harm in high-risk patients, universal screening, treatment of withdrawal and medication-assisted therapy for patients suffering from SUD, specialty addiction care, education, and community partnerships.

S chwartz Rounds This month's Schwartz Rounds will take place on September 3rd, 12-1p at Parnassus N-225, and will feature "The Patient I Will Never Forget"; as with other Schwartz Rounds, the goal is to foster an open discussion about the emotional impact of caring for patients. Please see the flyer for additional details. 

Looking for information from a past True North Newsletter? Please access them  here.