The University of Connecticut Health Center had a notable presence at this year’s Institute for Healthcare Improvement’s Annual National Forum on Quality Improvement in Health Care.
Nurse Wendy Martinson, Dr. Jason Ryan and Dr. Scott Allen presented posters Wednesday in Orlando.
Martinson, a quality assurance specialist, addressed the need for hospitals to work collaboratively with community providers to improve the quality of transitions for patients across the continuum of care.
“John Dempsey Hospital developed a community team which we call ‘The Dream Team,’” Martinson says. “Through JDH’s Dream Team, we have improved communication across settings, standardized heart failure education, and reduced readmission rates.”
Ryan, co-director of the UConn Heart Failure Center, also referred to the Dream Team in his presentation, which details how the UConn Health Center has reduced its heart failure readmission rates by 30 percent from 2008 to 2011.
Allen, an associate professor of medicine, spoke of a unique patient safety curriculum for the medical school’s third-year internal medicine clerkship. A survey of third- and fourth-year UConn medical students found that while they regularly observed opportunities to improve care during their rotations, many were hesitant to discuss them and were unfamiliar about the reporting systems.
On this project, Allen teamed with UConn School of Medicine faculty colleagues Drs. Bruce Gould, Dan Henry and Robert Aseltine, along with Dr. Elizabeth Herrle, a UConn School of Medicine graduate, and graduate assistant Martha Lawless.
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