DFWHC Foundation’s Quality Improvement Activities
THE ILLUSTRATION BELOW represents north Texas hospitals and the DFWHC Foundation’s initiatives and relationships
centered on achieving the National Strategy for Quality Improvement’s aims for better care, healthy people and communities,
and affordable care.
and universities. The Web site is fully accessible to the public
for general use and is highlighted in several local universities’
public health and policy courses.
North Texas Accountable Healthcare Partnership
DFWHC and the DFWHC Foundation are supporting the new
health information exchange (HIE) and quality improvement
and cost-savings sharing models in north Texas. The North Texas Accountable Healthcare Partnership is creating a 13-county
regional HIE that will encompass 150 hospitals, 12,000 physicians, and ancillary service providers and pharmaceutical organizations. The board represents local healthcare providers,
health insurers, employers, and patients.
The group’s agreed-upon best care algorithms (e.g., requirements for certain care practices that have been set up to share
cost savings) can be monitored by utilizing the HIE to collect
information for diabetic, congestive heart failure, and asthmatic
patients. Storage of this information and business intelligence
tools at the DFWHC Foundation can be used to assess performance and cost-saving opportunities.
This initiative is in the early stages, with the expectation of robust exchange by the end of 2012.
Texas Quality Initiative
The DFWHC Foundation, with the leadership of the region’s top
cardiothoracic surgeons and their hospital partners, is engaged
in an initiative pairing the existing claims warehouse with a So-
ciety for Thoracic Surgeon’s certified clinical registry. This will
provide a unique assessment of care and cost as well as research
opportunities.
North Texas Regional Extension Center
In April 2010 the Office of the National Coordinator for Health
Information Technology awarded the DFWHC Foundation an
agreement to establish the North Texas Regional Extension
Center to help primary care providers in north Texas implement
electronic health records and achieve meaningful use.
With more physicians implementing electronic records, the
DFWHC Foundation can match the care and claims information from more than 1,500 primary care providers in the region
with hospital-based patient information and clinical registry
data to create views of the community’s healthcare encounters
and prioritize needs for improvement.
The North Texas Regional Extension Center and Texas Quality
Initiative bring key physician leaders to what was once a hospi-tal-centric information center and align the community to meet
HHS’s National Strategy for Quality Improvement, including
improved health and care and reduced costs.
To learn more, visit www.dfwhcfoundation.org. ¢
Kristin Jenkins ( kjenkins@dfwhcfoundation.org) is president of the Dallas-Fort Worth Hospital Council Foundation and senior vice president of the
Dallas-Fort Worth Hospital Council.
