Newswise — Baylor Health Care System (BHCS) recently received two grants awards for health care improvement research related to communications in cancer care and patient safety in ambulatory care. In addition, Paul Convery, M.D., chief medical officer at BHCS, was elected to a leadership position for the National Quality Forum.
$150,000 Grant Award to Research Patient-Centered Communication in Cancer Care
BHCS, in collaboration with the RTI International DEcIDE Center, recently was awarded a $150,000 grant from the National Cancer Institute (NCI) Patient-Centered Communication to support research to measure and monitor patient-centered communications in cancer care.
According to the Institute of Medicine, patient-centered care focuses on "the patient's experience of illness and health care and the systems that work or fail to work to meet individual patients' needs." Effective communication among providers, patients, and their family members is essential for optimal cancer care, disease-free survival and enhanced quality of life.
Under the grant, researchers will develop ways to characterize and measure six functions of patient-centered communication in cancer care for patients who have been recently diagnosed, are in treatment, or have completed treatment. These functions, as defined by the NCI, are fostering healing relationships, exchanging information, responding to patients' emotions, managing uncertainty, making decisions and enabling patient self-management. In collaboration with the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) and the NCI, Baylor will organize a symposium of experts to share research findings.
Baylor Health Care System will partner on the project with Texas Oncology, P.A. (TOPA), the world's largest group of medical professionals devoted exclusively to cancer care. With 275 practicing physicians, TOPA serves patients at 98 locations throughout Texas and New Mexico, including 33 comprehensive cancer centers. Eric Nadler, M.D., M.P.P., medical oncologist and co-chair of Thoracic Oncology Research at TOPA, will provide clinical leadership for the project, in collaboration with David Ballard, M.D., Ph.D., chief quality officer at BHCS, and Neil Fleming, Ph.D., vice president of health care research at BHCS.
"Given the increasing importance of providing patient-centered care, an investigation of methodology for measuring and monitoring patient-centered communication in cancer care is both timely and applicable to health care practitioners and policymakers," said Dr. Ballard, who in addition to his BHCS leadership role, is chair of AHRQ's Health Care Quality and Effectiveness Research study section.
Since 2005, the BHCS Institute for Health Care Research and Improvement has been a member of the DEcIDE network, which creates collaborative research and practice-based programs to assist AHRQ in the development of new scientific knowledge about health care outcomes and services.
$200,000 Grant Award to Study Patient Safety in Ambulatory Care
BHCS will receive a $200,000 grant in 2008 from AHRQ to study methods to improve patient safety in ambulatory care. In the proposal to AHRQ written by Donald Kennerly, M.D., vice president of patient safety at BHCS, the research study " Adverse Event Directed Risk Analysis in Ambulatory Primary Care " will support further development and deployment of a chart review method refined by Dr. Kennerly and his BHCS colleagues, Quay Mercer and Sharon Tucker, M.D., to measure the frequency and type of adverse events that occur in ambulatory primary care practice. A second part of the study, done in collaboration with the Patient Safety Committee at HealthTexas Provider Network (HTPN), BHCS's physician group, will use this information to develop risk reduction strategies to prevent adverse events in primary care practices.
"This successful federal grant application was based on preliminary data sponsored by the BHCS Institute for Healthcare Research and Improvement and the Physician's Foundation for Health System Excellence," said Dr. Kennerly. "This AHRQ-funded research will include reviewing more than 6,000 additional charts from the practices of nearly 200 HealthTexas primary care physicians and a follow up series of innovative risk reduction methods to improve upon the already very strong health care provided by HealthTexas practices."
"Approximately one-third of all hospitalized patients in the United States who experience an adverse event do so related to primary care-based processes of care. Therefore, Dr. Kennerly's innovative patient safety research in the HTPN ambulatory care setting will provide insights that will enable Baylor hospitals in the Dallas/Fort Worth area to be positioned uniquely to reduce adverse events among hospitalized patients," according to David Ballard, M.D., Ph.D., chief quality office at BHCS.
Baylor Chief Medical Officer Named to NQF Leadership Position
The National Quality Forum (NQF), a private, not-for-profit membership organization created to develop and implement a national strategy for health care quality measurement and reporting, recently elected Paul Convery, M.D., chief medical officer at BHCS, as chair for its Provider Organizations Council. At the NQF Membership Meeting on Sept. 26, Dr. Convery officially assumed his two-year term. His responsibilities include, among other things, leadership education and recognition, as well as obtaining member feedback on NQF endorsed measures and practices.
About Baylor Health Care System
Baylor Health Care System is a network of hospitals, primary care and specialty care centers, rehabilitation clinics, affiliated ambulatory surgery centers and the Baylor Research Institute. One of the largest private-sector employers in Dallas/Fort Worth, Baylor employs more than 16,000 people and has more than 2,700 physicians on its medical staffs. Baylor University Medical Center, flagship hospital of the system, is a major patient care, teaching and research center for the Southwest. For fiscal year 2007, Baylor Health Care System will report $390 million in community benefit to the Texas Department of State Health Services. For more information about Baylor, visit http://www.BaylorHealth.com.
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