HRET is excited to announce that the AHA Quality Center, renamed Hospitals in Pursuit of Excellence, has joined the HRET team. With the recently passed health reform legislation, hospitals and health systems are reaching out to AHA more than ever for assistance in preparing for and implementing some of the new requirements of the legislation. Beginning several years ago, with the creation of the Quality Center, AHA laid the groundwork for helping hospitals to improve their quality and operational performance by sharing practices with proven benefits. This work evolved into AHA's Hospitals in Pursuit of Excellence (HPOE) platform, to which HRET has been a major contributor. Given HRET's strong reputation in health services research, its work in patient safety and quality, and its track record in providing tools to the field, AHA recently assigned leadership of the HPOE initiatives to HRET. Click here to learn more about Hospitals in Pursuit of Excellence.

Hospitals have an essential leadership role in their communities, and the availability of a stable, high-quality health care workforce has been shown repeatedly to be critical to the efficient and effective delivery of health services.  Hospital health and wellness strategies are crucial to providing the resources and incentives for hospital employees to serve as role models in their communities for health and wellness.  The AHA's Long Range Policy Committee encourages all hospitals to complete a short survey about their employee health and wellness programs, which will inform a committee paper later this year on the state of such programs and recommended practices for the field. Hospital CEOs, wellness directors, or human resources administrators in charge of wellness programs are encouraged to complete the multiple-choice survey.  A letter containing instructions for accessing the survey was recently e-mailed to hospital CEOs.  For more information on the survey, contact Kevin Van Dyke at kvandyke@aha.org.

The American Hospital Association recently awarded Fred Hessler, managing director of Citigroup's New York health care group, and John O'Brien, president and chief executive officer of UMass Memorial Health Care, Inc. with the 2010 Board of Trustees Award. The award is presented to individuals or groups who have made substantial and noteworthy contributions to the work of the AHA. Hessler and O'Brien received the award at a ceremony at the AHA Annual Membership meeting in Washington. Hessler currently serves on the AHA's operations committee and has been a member and chair of the HRET Board. Hessler also is a member of the AHA Center for Healthcare Governance's blue ribbon panel on trustee core competencies and the Healthcare Executives Study Society.  O'Brien is a past member of the AHA board and a current member of the HRET Board, the AHA Committee on Research, and AHA's 2010 Operations Committee. Click here for more information on AHA Leadership Awards.

The Institute for Safe Medication Practices (ISMP) will again partner with HRET and the American Hospital Association (AHA) on a resurvey of U.S. hospitals regarding their medication safety practices.  The survey, which is supported by a grant from The Commonwealth Fund, continues the work of similar surveys conducted in 2000 and 2004 and will use the 2010 ISMP Medication Safety Self-Assessment® as a survey tool.  The survey will document the progress of U.S. hospitals during the last five years of intense national attention to medication safety and identify the impact of new and emerging challenges, such as staffing shortages, shrinking reimbursement systems, and the application of new technology. The assessment will be designed to provide healthcare organizations with a way to evaluate their medication safety practices, identify opportunities for improvement, and compare their experiences over time with the aggregate experience of demographically similar organizations. The 2010 medication safety self assessment survey is currently slated to be launched this fall. As with past surveys, hospitals will be invited to participate anonymously via a secure, password protected Web site. All participants will have unlimited opportunity to access, view, and download their own scores throughout the period of data collection. Click here for more information about the survey.