Hospitals in pursuit of excellence

Allied Hospital Association Leadership for Quality

Throughout the United States, allied hospital associations—state, regional and metropolitan—are working with their member hospitals to dramatically improve health care outcomes. Allied hospital associations have successfully launched evidence-based performance improvement initiatives and demonstrated that quality and safety have improved and improvement can be sustained over time and spread to other providers. Through these efforts, the associations have added a special value to quality and safety improvement efforts in their local area, driven by the face-to-face communications, greater personal familiarity, and greater ease of accessibility that can be fostered among leaders of hospitals in close proximity to one another.

In 2011, eighteen allied hospital associations submitted their success stories in performance improvement for the American Hospital Association's inaugural Dick Davidson Quality Milestone Award for Allied Association Leadership. Many of their improvement initiatives share common strategic implementation and measurement elements. Using examples from all the applicants, this guide describes the common elements of implementing successful performance improvement initiatives among hospitals and health systems:

• Strategic Plan Development and Implementation
• Member Leadership Engagement
• Alignment with National Initiatives
• Measurement
• Promoting Transparency
• Deployment of Multiple Improvement Initiatives
• Partnership Development
• Patient Engagement
• Recognition Programs