Impact of Quality Assessment on Clinical Practice, Intermountain Healthcare

Abstract

Intermountain Healthcare has steadily improved outcomes and reduced the cost of care by providing physicians and other care providers validated and meaningful information about their quality and cost metrics compared to their peers. Clinicians voluntarily improve their performance as the best interests of their patients and their communities given their prime motivation for being in medicine. This chapter demonstrates the ways in which reliable data systems can be effectively used for clinician insight into the systems they practice in, which had not been transparent to them before. A top-tier healthcare delivery organization will commit substantial resources to collecting and sharing data on all aspects of healthcare delivery. This data spans the organizational level to the hospital level, to the specific unit level, and most importantly to the individual clinician level. Healthcare organizations need to commit substantial personnel and data analytic resources to build actionable reports that can be shared with clinicians in as close to real time as possible. Physician leaders need to be chosen, trained, empowered, and supported for their time to then educate their colleagues in the understanding of these reports and metrics. These clinician leaders are the best ones to educate their colleagues, who then voluntarily seek to improve their own patient care delivery and of their teams.