It's All About Quality (III)

04/17/18 • 15 min

Rosemary Duncan, Pharm.D., BCPS - Medication Safety Officer - and Jacob Smith, Pharm.D. - Assistant Director of Medication Safety and Quality at The Johns Hopkins Hospital talk about measuring quality in hospital settings and how quality metrics are used for accreditation and value-based payments.

Key Lessons: Measuring quality is difficult and event rates are not an adequate metric of medication safety; pharmacists can help improve HCAHPS (Hospital Consumer Assessment of Healthcare Providers and Systems) scores by providing patient and provider education; quality in healthcare is advanced by implementing high-reliability systems and processes by interprofessional teams.

Previous Episode

It's All About Quality (II)

Laura Cranston, R.Ph. - Chief Executive Office of the Pharmacy Quality Alliance (PQA) - talks about the work of PQA and the National Quality Strategy which aims to make care delivery higher quality and more affordable to achieve healthier people and communities.

Key Lessons: PQA plays an important role by convening key stakeholders and creating quality measures that are used by the payer community. Pharmacists and student pharmacists can play an important role in PQA's work.

Next Episode

Digital Health Devices and Apps! (I)

Timothy Aungst, Pharm.D. - Associate Professor at the MCPHS University in Worcester, Massachusetts and the author of The Digital Apothecary blog talks to us about the current digital health landscape.

Key Lessons: Stand alone mobile health devices and apps have limited value; patient-specific data can inform diagnosis and treatment decisions; aggregated data from 1000's of users can help direct public health efforts; and pharmacists can and should play a bigger role in mHealth/digital health.