Align All Health
Align All Health is a targeted intervention for hospitals and community mental health centers to improve health outcomes and care transitions for high-risk and behavioral health patients.
KHC has successfully led a number of intiatives to support our hospitals and partnerships in their efforts to improve quality and safety.
Some of the previous initiatives include:
Align All Health is a targeted intervention for hospitals and community mental health centers to improve health outcomes and care transitions for high-risk and behavioral health patients.
From December 2011 through March 2020, the Kansas Healthcare Collaborative led hospital patient safety improvement efforts with more than 115 hospitals statewide on behalf of the Kansas Hospital Association as a state partner with the Health Research & Educational Trust (HRET) of the American Hospital Association. The Hospital Improvement Innovation Network (HIIN) built upon the collective momentum of the Hospital Engagement Networks to reduce patient harm and preventable readmissions. Hospitals across Kansas and across the nation worked toward the CMS initiative's goals to achieve a 20 percent decrease in overall patient harm and a 12 percent reduction in 30-day hospital readmissions from 2014 and 2015 baselines.
Areas of focus included adverse drug events, hospital-acquired infections, injury from falls, readmissions, sepsis, pressure injuries, ventilator-associated event, venous thromboembolism, multi-drug resistant organisms, antibiotic stewardship, culture of safety, health equity and patient and family engagement.
As part of its core initiatives, KHC has most recently provided direct, in-person assistance to participating practices through its Practice Transformation Network (PTN). Practices have the opportunity to collaborate with clinician colleagues locally, regionally, and nationally to accelerate innovative care strategies. Since 2015, KHC has enrolled over 1,400 clinicians from across Kansas.
Members of the advisory group for the Kansas Healthcare-Associated Infections & Anti-microbial Resistance Program
Antibiotics save lives, but any time antibiotics are used, they can cause side effects and lead to antibiotic resistance. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, at least 47 million antibiotic prescriptions are unnecessarily given in doctors’ offices and emergency rooms across the U.S. each year, which makes improving antibiotic prescribing and use a national priority. The CDC also reports that drug-resistant bacteria cause 23,000 deaths and 2 million illnesses each year.
KHC is working with the Kansas Department of Health and Environment (KDHE) to advance its Healthcare-Associated Infections and Antimicrobial Resistance Program statewide. Antimicrobial Stewardship is also a patient safety focus area of the Hospital Improvement Innovation Network.
A variety of learning opportunities and resources are available in support of efforts by hospitals, clinicians, and others who are leading this important work. Find more information here.
In an effort to reduce the spread of influenza and to protect the health of both patients and health care providers, the Kansas Healthcare Collaborative recommends that all health care providers receive the seasonal influenza immunization.
In 2018, KHC's 10th annual statewide survey of hospital health care workers found that 93.9 percent of hospital personnel in Kansas received influenza vaccination during the 2017-18 flu season, up from 64% during the 2008-09 flu season. Download press release.
More than 20 Kansas hospitals participated in the final cohort of STRIVE, a patient safety improvement program for hospitals working to improve general infection prevention and control practices. The 12-month program for acute care hospitals and LTACHs began June 2017.
STRIVE was a national initiative funded by the Centers for Disease Control & Prevention and administered by the Health Research & Educational Trust (HRET). Hospitals collaborated to work on practices to reduce healthcare-associated infections, such as Clostridium difficile infections (CDI), central line-associated bloodstream infections (CLABSI), catheter-associated urinary tract infections (CAUTI), and methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) bacteremia.
State partners in this initiative included Kansas Healthcare Collaborative, Kansas Foundation for Medical Care and the Kansas Department of Health & Environment.
Babies born preterm, before 37 completed weeks of gestation, are at increased risk of immediate life-threatening health problems, as well as long-term complications and developmental delays. As a result of these risks, preterm birth is a leading cause of infant death and childhood disability. Although the risk of complications is greatest among those babies who are born the earliest, even those babies born “late preterm” (34 to 36 weeks’ gestation) and "early term" (37 and 38 weeks' gestation) are more likely than full-term babies to experience morbidity and mortality.
Quality leaders, front line staff and support personnel of more than 100 hospitals across the state became “agents of change” this year as they worked to improve patient safety. Their accomplishments in the 12-month initiative, Hospital Engagement Network 2.0 (HEN2.0), were recognized by the Kansas Healthcare Collaborative, American Hospital Association, and Health Research and Educational Trust at a statewide HEN 2.0 meeting held in Topeka last week.
Kansas hospitals participated in the campaign conducted by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services’ Partnership for Patients program involving more than 3,700 hospitals nationally. The Kansas HEN 2.0 was managed by the Kansas Healthcare Collaborative, on behalf of the Kansas Hospital Association in partnership with the AHA/HRET and more than 30 other state hospital associations.
HEN 2.0 continued a national initiative with the ambitious goal to reduce adverse events by 40 percent and readmissions by 20 percent. Hospitals worked together to make improvements in processes and outcomes for 10 or more core patient safety areas, such as the prevention of falls, infections and adverse drug events.
Fourteen Kansas hospital emergency departments participated in the On the CUSP: Stop CAUTI improvement intervention for E.D.s from January through July 2015.
As part of the On the CUSP: Stop CAUTI program, 17 Kansas hospitals participated in a nine-month quality improvement project focused on preventing catheter-associated urinary tract infections (CAUTI) in the intensive care unit (ICU) setting from December 2014 through August 2015.
Through a joint effort to enhance the quality of health care patients receive, Kansas hospitals have significantly reduced central line-associated bloodstream infections (CLABSIs) after one year of participation in the Kansas On the CUSP: Stop BSI project. Working together with the Kansas Healthcare Collaborative (KHC), 50 unit teams are participating in this voluntary national effort to eliminate CLABSI using the Comprehensive Unit-based Safety Program (CUSP).
Evidence shows that infections can be dramatically reduced by following a “safety checklist" which calls for hospital staff to thoroughly wash hands, use maximum barrier precautions, avoid putting catheters in the groin, cleanse the insertion site with a chlorhexidine antiseptic solution, and remove the catheters as soon as they are no longer needed.
Infections are further reduced by implementing a teamwork approach used in the CUSP program. Each hospital unit forms a CUSP team consisting of a nurse, physician and executive champion. Each member of this team plays an important role in improving the patient safety culture on the unit. The team works together to identify potential harm and find ways to reduce harm. When harm does occur, the team goes through a process to learn from “defects.”