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June 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 key highlights from the scorecard.

What are the key takeaways from this month's scorecard? Patient experience: our % of units, practices and services improving compared to last year is still falling short of our goals; however, there are several areas "on the cusp" of meeting their goals with 2 months left in the year. Quality & Safety: we've had a couple months in a row with outstanding performance in sepsis mortality and overall mortality, as well as sustained improvements in our 30-day readmissions. One key improvement area is our care of patients who develop sepsis during hospitalization; this population presents different challenges than our care directed at those who are admitted with sepsis. Healthcare Equity: while the disparity isn't eliminated yet, we've made notable progress in our primary care settings to improve the care of our Black/African-American patients with hypertension. Our People: both the Gallup and Net Promoter Survey results are out with summary analyses being organized. We'll provide key highlights in next month's newsletter.

UCSF Health Improvement Poster Symposium Recap Symposium Festivities We were thrilled to showcase a record 200+ improvement initiatives across the organization, which we organized into an e-program booklet  (in Box). We encourage you to peruse the booklet to appreciate the incredibly diverse work that touched all of our True North pillars. The several hundred attendees enjoyed socializing with old (and new) friends and learning about the amazing work of their colleagues. Mark Laret, Sheila Antrum and Catherine Lucey even took time to toss t-shirts off stage in trying to simulate Oracle Arena for a Warriors game. We will look forward to next year's event as our biggest problem will be space to accommodate the growing number of improvement projects!

Highlighting the Most Impactful Improvement Initiatives During the symposium, we invited groups of leaders to conduct "Poster Leader Rounds"--an opportunity to both recognize the enthusiastic presenters for their work, while also learning about their improvement initiatives in intimate fashion. Each rounding team was asked to select the top initiatives that were the most innovative, impactful and ready for spread to other areas. We've organized the "Highest Rated Improvement Initiatives" in this summary that we hope you'll enjoy reviewing; please congratulate your colleagues for their work and adopt (or adapt) their ideas to your own clinical setting.

QI BINGO Activity For those who attended the symposium, we also created a QI BINGO card (see below) to allow folks to earn boxes by learning about improvement initiatives from their colleagues. Once they completed 12 "engagement" activities across different True North pillar categories, their cards were entered into a raffle prize giveaway.

Other News and Announcements

Annual UCSF Medical Staff Meeting Please join this year's annual medical staff meeting on Tuesday, June 25th from 12-130p in the Milberry Lights Conference room. In addition to updates and announcements, the keynote speaker will be Dr. Sandra Hernandez who is the President & CEO of the California Health Care Foundation. It should be a terrific presentation about the current state of healthcare issues that face our region and country.

Learning Health Systems K12 Announces Inaugural Cohort UCSF recently appointed Tasce Bongiovanni , William Brown III , James Harrison , and Matt Pantell as our first four Learning Health System (LHS) scholars. The LHS K12 is a new program to support the career development of scientists at UCSF and affiliate institutions, who conduct patient-centered outcomes research (PCOR) within learning health systems in order to help accelerate the translation of research and evidence into practice. It's a wonderful opportunity to bridge our critical mission areas to improve health outcomes. 

Schwartz Rounds This month's Schwartz Rounds will take place on June 26th, 7-8a at Parnassus HSW-300, and will feature "Hope, Loss, Grief, and Resilience in Surgery"; as with other Schwartz Rounds, the goal is to foster an open discussion about the emotional impact of caring for patients. 

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