What is "True North" and why is it important? Please read here to learn more.
Achieving Our True North
Please review our currentTrue North scorecard that continues to serve as one lens into our organizational priorities and performance. Next month, we'll make the transition to our FY20 scorecard as this one represents the final one for FY19. We'll look forward to sharing our Annual Performance Improvement Summary Report next month that captures the highlights behind the metrics.
What did we learn from our FY19 approach to sepsis mortality and overall mortality?
At this month's Quality Improvement Executive Committee, our sepsis and mortality teams shared an overview of the past year's improvement efforts. In both conditions, we focus our attention on an Observed (inpatient deaths) to Expected (risk adjustment based on severity of illness and medical complexity documented) index, which allows for benchmarking against other academic institutions. We saw improvements in both O/E indices the past year. Key highlights to share include:
For sepsis mortality, our key improvement opportunity is in early identification and treatment of patients who develop the condition during hospitalization ("not present on admission"), particularly for patients transferred from outside hospitals.
For overall mortality, our "real-time" mortality review process pilot that depends on direct input from providers within 48hrs of a death has allowed us to go beyond deaths and better learn about systems issues. Examples include the impact of our capacity/throughput on delays in care, communication surrounding outside hospital transfers, and RN/MD communication. The patient stories are a critical supplement to our metrics in understanding improvement opportunities for the year ahead. We look forward to spreading the real-time mortality review process across all services in the year ahead.
News and Announcements
Sepsis Awareness Month: Focusing on Early Recognition
Sepsis Awareness Month is an important reminder of why we focus on improving the care we provide to patients who suffer from sepsis. A CDC report last month entitled "Think Sepsis. Time Matters" indicated that sepsis begins outside of the hospital for nearly 80% of patients, and 7 in 10 patients with sepsis had recently used health care services or had chronic diseases requiring frequent medical care. We invite you to a UCSF speaker series this month to further highlight the critical role we play in the early recognition, treatment and prevention of the morbidity/mortality associated with sepsis.
Fight the Flu, Vaccinate Your Crew!
The UCSF annual campus-wide flu outreach clinics for 2019 are fast approaching. This year, the clinic will run from Wednesday, September 4thto Thursday, October 24th. Click here for the complete 2019 flu clinic schedule and official announcement fromOccupational Health Services. All UCSF staff, students and volunteers are encouraged to attend the clinic to receive a free flu shot. Please look out for communications soon around our UCSF Health efforts to vaccinate our patients.
Leverage your QI work with MOC credit
The UCSF Maintenance of Certification Approval Program (MOCAP) is an approved sponsor of the ABMS Multi-Specialty Portfolio Approval Program. UCSF’s MOCAP supports, monitors, approves, and reports institutional quality improvement (QI) efforts to meet MOC Part 4 Improvement in Medical Practice requirements across multiple AMBS specialty boards. If you're involved in or leading an improvement project, our UCSF team created a streamlined process to get MOC4 points for your entire group (e.g., project team, Division, and/or Department).
Looking for information from a past True North Newsletter? Please access them here.
