Quality Institute

The Quality Institute at United Hospital Fund, in partnership with key stakeholders, develops and promotes innovative strategies to strengthen and spread best practices across the spectrum of health care settings. We tackle tough questions about how to define and measure quality, engage patients in improving services, and are developing the next generation of health care quality improvement leaders.

PROFILING QUALITY
As health care moves toward paying for value rather than volume, the Quality Institute is working with a variety of partners, including the New York State Department of Health, to develop and implement meaningful measures of provider performance—measures that reflect a growing concern, for example, with primary care’s attention to prevention, management of acute and chronic disease, and cost-effective, appropriate use of services.

Through a State Innovation Models (SIM) contract with the New York State Department of Health (Health Research Incorporated), the Quality Institute provides expertise, analysis, and strategic support for oversight of quality measurement, monitoring, and improvement for the state's Primary Care Transformation Program.

BUILDING CAPACITY
Tremendous strides have been made in quality improvement and patient safety but health care providers need continuing support and resources to ensure safe and effective care within a value-based model. Quality Institute initiatives, individually and in partnerships, promote the systematic use of best practices in a range of care settings. The Institute’s Antibiotic Stewardship Certificate Program and Outpatient Antibiotic Stewardship Initiative, for example, anticipated and address a national priority of ensuring the prudent use of antibiotics across settings—not only in hospital inpatient care but in nursing homes and ambulatory care as well. 

The UHF/Greater New York Hospital Association Clinical Quality Fellowship Program (CQFP) supports and extends those efforts by training a cadre of physicians and nurses to become quality improvement specialists and champions; many of these Fellows go on to leadership positions in institutions throughout the New York metropolitan area. At a more macro level, the High Reliability Leadership Forum brings together senior leaders from 11 GNYHA member hospitals to develop strategies for sustainable quality improvement efforts at their facilities. 

PATIENT ENGAGEMENT
Current measures of performance tend to focus on the volume and type of care provided and not on outcomes that could aid patients’ treatment decisions or help engage them in their care. The Quality Institute is leading efforts to assess, advance, and spread measures that will help patients make informed decisions about choosing a health care provider for their specific needs, and that will reflect patients’ perceptions of the outcomes of treatment—observable changes in their functioning, for example—to improve care planning and evaluation. Our work promotes better discharge planning and ensure the accessibility of information and tools needed to help patients and families make informed choices about post-acute care, examines quality measures central to consumer decision-making, and advances the use of patient-reported outcome measures in primary care.

The Quality Institute is supported, in part, by:
Charina Endowment Fund
The Hearst Foundations
New York State Department of Health (Health Research Incorporated)
New York State Health Foundation
The Engelberg Foundation

The content on these pages was prepared by UHF and does not necessarily represent the views of these funders.

 
The Quality Institute Team
Anne-Marie J. Audet, MD, MSc, SM
Joan Guzik, MBA
Lynn Rogut, MCRP
Pooja Kothari, RN, MPH