AHA Chair Discusses Health Care Quality, Measurement at NQF Conference

Addressing the National Quality Forum annual conference today in Washington, D.C., Nancy Agee, president and CEO of Carilion Clinic in Roanoke, VA, and 2018 chair of the AHA Board of Trustees, highlighted the importance of a “culture of caring” and curiosity to “a high-quality, highly reliable organization,” sharing examples from her organization’s “never ending” journey to improve quality and patient safety. “There is nothing more important than providing those we serve a safe, highly reliable, quality experience,” Agee said. “Patients put their trust in us – and do so at the most vulnerable moments in their lives – our singular purpose must be high-quality, highly reliable, compassionate care.” While quality measurement holds “tremendous potential” for improving quality, “excessive measurement is costly and wasteful, and poorly designed measures can impact caregivers’ practice in ways that negatively affect our patients,” Agee said. “At Carilion, we have 15 full-time employees dedicated to external reporting at more than $1.5 million in salary…And then we have dozens of staff on our analytics and process improvement teams. Like our colleagues at NQF, we would like to see more patient-centered outcome measures.”