HRSA’s Center for Quality and Office of Pharmacy Affairs rolled out the agency’s new Patient Safety and Pharmacy Collaborative at a Nov. 16 meeting in Gaithersburg, Md.
“Getting on an Upward Spiral – Together: Taking Action to Improve Quality,” the second meeting in 2007 to showcase quality improvements in HRSA programs, focused on quality improvements in the areas of health literacy, patient safety and pharmacy services. More than 160 people attended, including HRSA grantees and other safety net providers, leaders of key national associations and organizations, and staff from HRSA bureaus and offices (see box).
The first meeting, held April 18 in Rockville, Md., highlighted the progress of HRSA’s health centers in achieving improved health outcomes in clinical quality performance measures such as access to prenatal care, appropriate immunizations, screening for colon, breast and cervical cancers, and chronic disease management.
Panel presentations on “HRSA Grantees Achieving Results in Core Measure Areas” and “Health Literacy: Putting It All Together” filled the morning session, followed by an afternoon panel on the new Patient Safety and Pharmacy Collaborative.
The new collaborative’s goals are to:
- improve patient safety;
- increase high-quality, cost-effective pharmacy services; and
- improve health outcomes at HRSA’s health centers and among HRSA’s many partners.
“We’ve been working hard for months to identify ‘best practice’ models of patient safety and clinical pharmacy services from among our grantees and their partners,” said Center for Quality Director Denise Geolot. “We feel confident that these top-performers will set the standard for patient safety at health centers and throughout the country.”
The impetus for the new collaborative grew out of a 1999 Institute of Medicine study, To Err is Human, which found that medication errors injure 1.5 million people every year, and that for every dollar spent on ambulatory medications, another dollar is spent to treat new health problems caused by medications. In creating the collaborative, the Center for Quality also was responding to the rapid growth of pharmacy services in HRSA’s programs and among safety net partners. |
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![HRSA's Jimmy Mitchell, Dennis Williams, Dennis Geolot, and Jim Macrae at the Nov. 16 meeting.](images/safetymeeting300x192.jpg)
Left to right: HRSA’s Jimmy Mitchell, Dennis Williams, Dennis Geolot, and Jim Macrae at the Nov. 16 meeting.
![More than 160 participants listened and learned about the new collaborative.](images/safetycollaborative300x173.jpg)
More than 160 participants listened and learned about the new collaborative.
![The meeting was designed to generate interactive work and group discussions.](images/safetygroup300x167.jpg)
The meeting was designed to generate interactive work and group discussions.
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