Hunt Presents at NNPHI Open Forum

Jennifer Hunt, Clinical Instructor in the Department of Health Services Management and Policy of the ETSU College of Public Health, presented at the Open Forum Meeting of the National Network of Public Health Institutes in Indianapolis, Indiana on April 7th, 2016.

The Open Forum Meeting for Quality Improvement in Public Health (the “Open Forum”) convenes public health department leaders to explore and shape the meaning of quality and quality improvement in public health practice as part of the Community of Practice for Public Health Improvement. The Open Forum typically includes up to 300 attendees.  Funding from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation supports the Open Forum meeting series.

The presentation addressed the use of process improvement methods, such as Lean and A3 methodologies, to ultimately improve CHF Core Measure Scores.  Ms. Hunt stated, “In this case, we wanted to improve the Congestive Heart Failure patient identification process and, in turn, increase the CHF Core Measure scores.  The project not only showed that by using simple quality improvement tools we were able to make a substantial impact on the identification process, but that quality improvement tools and methods of thinking can be successfully integrated in the health care system.  These quality improvement tools are universal and have the opportunity to be truly impactful in terms of improvement measures in a time when health systems are essentially being tasked to do more with less.”  Mrs. Hunt facilitated the quality improvement event in which an interdisciplinary team of six members considered the reason for action, determined appropriate improvement goals, utilized root cause analysis to determine the underlying challenges, designed experiments based on the identified challenges, and then organized a systemized rollout with “education days” to familiarize staff with interventions before implementation.         

Mrs. Hunt’s presentation is sponsored by the Tennessee Institute of Public Health (TNIPH).  TNIPH Executive Director Ginny Kidwell stated,  “As a member of the National Network of Public Health Institutes, the Tennessee Institute of Public Health is proud to help sponsor Jennifer’s poster presentation on congestive heart failure at the 2016 Spring Open Forum for Quality Improvement in Public Health.”