Improvement Opportunity for Maine hospitals: AF4Q Hospital Quality Network

As part of its Aligning Forces for Quality (AF4Q) effort, Quality Counts was able to offer support to Maine hospitals interested in participating in the AF4Q “Hospital Quality Network”, an improvement effort aimed at reducing readmissions, increasing ED throughput, and improving language services.

Of the 139 hospitals in targeted communities across the country that stepped forward to participate in this year-long effort sponsored by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (RWJF), 11 are in Maine.  Participating hospitals chose one or more of three areas to improve:  reducing readmissions, increasing throughput and improving language services.  All participating hospitals will also identify and address racial and ethnic disparities in care and standardize the collection of self-reported race, ethnicity and language data. More information is available in the AF4Q Hospital Quality Network Overview.

Maine hospitals participating in the AF4Q Hospital Quality Network (HQN) include:

• Central Maine Medical Center
• Eastern Maine Medical Center
• HD Goodall Hospital
• Maine Medical Center
• MaineGeneral Medical Center
• Mercy Hospital – Portland
• Mid Coast Hospital
• Penobscot Bay Medical Center
• Penobscot Valley Hospital
• Redington-Fairview General Hospital
• Rumford Hospital

Support for improvement is offered through distance-based collaborative learning opportunities and access to national experts, tools, and resources. Participation in any of the three areas will provide hospitals with an opportunity to:

• Gain access to proven interventions, strategies and user-friendly online tools/resources that have been proven effective in changing hospital processes, leading to improved quality and clinical outcomes;
• Receive training on the standardized collection of self-reported race, ethnicity and language data;
• Participate in monthly forums, such as webinars and conference calls, designed to provide expert knowledge, exchange learnings across hospitals and plan action steps for hospital teams;
• Have access to the listserv for all participating hospitals, as a vehicle for resource sharing; and
• Participate in presentations at national Aligning Forces meetings to showcase, share and spread lessons learned.

Participating hospitals have made a committment to do the following:

• Create a plan for improvement;
• Participate in peer-to-peer learning activities such as monthly webinars and conference calls;
• Regularly submit data on the required set of performance measures via an online, password-protected data collection web system;
• Standardize the collection race, ethnicity, language data during registration and participate in race, ethnicity, language webinars;
• Periodically report on progress to Quality Counts and its AF4Q partners;
• Submit quarterly progress reports to the AF4Q National Program Office.

This opportunity is made available to hospitals as a benefit of Maine’s participation in the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation-funded Aligning Forces for Quality initiative; there is no charge to hospitals for participating but hospitals have committed their time and resources to making targeted improvements in this effort. Visit the RWJF website for more information on the Hospital Quality Network.