Volume VIII 2012
The University of Alabama at Birmingham School of Health Professions Department of Health Services Administration Phone: 205-934-5661 Fax: 205-975-6608
R ESEARCH U PDATE THE EVOLVING NATURE OF HEALTHCARE INSIDE THIS ISSUE:
Achieving Excellence in Research and Teaching
2
Faculty Highlights
3
Honors Program Cultivates Young Researchers
4
Newly-funded and Ongoing Research
5
Recent Publications
6-7
New HSA Faculty
8
In 2010, we introduced the department’s vision to “shape the future of healthcare.” We addressed healthcare IT and quality of care and emphasized the central role that government healthcare reform will play in that future. Much has happened since 2010 on all fronts; we have been working to fully understand and influence the still uncertain future of the healthcare system. In the pages that follow, we demonstrate how the department and its faculty advance the research enterprise and translate research into practice. The department’s external grant support, publications, and editorships of major journals all point to the faculty’s leadership roles in the profession. Consistent with the National Symposium theme this year, we present the 2012 Research Updates: “The Evolving Nature of Healthcare.” A major thrust of our efforts started in February 2011 with the invitation of Jean Chenoweth, Senior Vice President, Center for Performance Improvement, Thomson Reuters, to deliver the 2011 L. R. Jordan Endowed Lecture, “The Impact of Leadership – The Driving Force for Quality.” At the time, Ms. Chenoweth and Thomson Reuters collected, analyzed and reported a vast array of data pertinent to the quality of healthcare services. Their “100 Top Hospitals” reports are widely referenced for information regarding hospital quality. Her presentation described quality assessment that looked at the level of a given quality metric at a point in time as well as the change or trajectory of that metric over a five-year period. She concluded that healthcare leadership was essential for sustained quality improvement in healthcare organizations. She
indicated that irrespective of the outcome of specific healthcare reform legislation, the delivery system must find a way to provide better quality to more people at a reasonable cost. Important to those concerned with education, Ms. Chenoweth argued that the comprehensive reform of healthcare will be from within the system and will fundamentally change the roles and responsibilities of healthcare leaders. Emphasizing that these leaders will be accountable for health outcomes, not just to patients in their facilities, but also for the health of the broader community and that accountability will arise from routine measurement and reporting of outcomes. Creating sustained improvement will force future leaders to concentrate on changing culture and not just processes, and by necessity these leaders will need to communicate to different audiences in different manners. Finally, future leaders must be flexible because the performance metrics will differ across components of the delivery system (small hospital, home care, teaching hospital, etc).
Jean Chenoweth, Senior Vice President, Thomas Reuters health IT curriculum to train the workforce necessary for our healthcare system to transition to the electronic health record. This curriculum is being used throughout the US and in over 70 countries on six continents. Other parts of Research Updates features a profile of Robert Weech-Maldonado, Ph.D., our L. R. Jordan Endowed Chair and his pioneering work on health disparities and cultural competence. His work will drive our future leaders to address the health improvement needs of communities. We also profile Dr. Amy Landry’s work on Medicaid Reform and Dr. Shannon Houser’s research on the electronic health record and her international work. Finally, on the back page we introduce two new faculty members, Dr. Jessica Williams and Bryan Breland, JD and their roles in the future of our department. Our faculty has had outstanding productivity with over 120 scholarly publications, and 30 funded projects. If you would like a complete list of publications or a list of funded projects, please contact the department.
In keeping with the growing concerns over healthcare quality measurement and with the continuing importance of healthcare IT, in 2011 the department created the new Center for Health Informatics for Patient Safety/Quality (CHIPS/Q) within the department. The goal of this Center is to provide educational consultation on health IT and its role in improving healthcare quality and patient safety. We plan to capitalize on our informatics research and health IT education expertise. Our department was one of five institutions Continued on Next Page: selected to develop a national