Goals of the Grant Program
Goals of the Grant Program
The leading goal of Pursuing Perfection: Raising the Bar for Health Care Performance is to help hospital and physician organizations across the country dramatically improve the quality of healthcare by implementing redesigned care processes for chronic conditions. The purpose of the initiative — and the challenge for Hackensack University Medical Center (HUMC) as a grantee — is to show that system-wide efforts are feasible and that higher standards for healthcare quality and safety can be attained. Targeting Chronic Conditions
The Institute of Medicine’s published reports about the need to improve healthcare in America (see Stimulus for Pursuing Perfection ) identified certain chronic conditions that should be given priority for improvement efforts. The priority list includes 15 chronic conditions that most frequently affect a significant portion of the population and account for a sizable amount of the nation’s financial burden for health expenditures.

The top 15 chronic conditions targeted by the grant program include:
Cancer
Stroke
Diabetes
HIV/AIDS
Emphysema
Hypertension
High cholesterol
Ischemic heart disease
Asthma
Arthritis
Back problems
Stomach ulcers
Gallbladder disease
Depression and anxiety disorders
Alzheimer’s disease and other dementia

The targeted areas of care to be undertaken by Hackensack University Medical Center were selected by the Pursuing Perfection Senior Team Leaders based on the published priority list, as well as the medical center’s expertise in the chosen areas of care and its pre-established goals to improve patient care for specific disease groups in the community.

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Focused Aims for Areas of Patient Care
The Institute of Medicine’s published reports about the need to improve healthcare in America (see Stimulus for Pursuing Perfection ) identified six areas of focus as a guide to overall strategic goals:
Safety
Goal: Strive to make patients measurably safer; avoid safety hazards and errors that harm patients and employees.

Effectiveness
Goal: Strive to make patients healthier.

Patient-Centered Care
Goal: Respect each individual’s unique needs and preferences; strive to make patients feel more respected by the healthcare system.

Timeliness
Goal: Strive to have patients wait less time for care; deliver all indicated services at the right time.

Efficiency
Goal: Strive to improve patient outcomes by administering care more productively; avoid services that are not helpful to the patient or are not reasonably cost-effective.

Equity
Goal: Provide the same level of care for all patients, regardless of socioeconomic status, gender, race, religion, or sexual-orientation.
All of the focused aims for improvement listed above have been incorporated into the Pursuing Perfection programs that have been undertaken by Hackensack University Medical Center. (To read about the goals for each patient care program, choose a selection from the Targeted Areas of Care. )

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HUMC Goals and Promises
Hackensack University Medical Center is challenged to show that modification is possible by putting advanced practices into place and pursuing new institutional goals through executive leadership.

Organizational Goals   Overall organizational goals for all projects include:
  • achieving 100% of the promised goals developed for each targeted area of care.
  • reducing readmission rates for specific illnesses.
  • decreasing serious complications.
  • reducing length of stay.
  • reducing cost per case.
  • increasing patient volume.
  • increasing patient satisfaction.
  • promoting new models of care.
Overall Promises   By the end of two years, Hackensack University Medical Center has promised to:
  • produce nearly perfect care processes and substantial improvement in outcome indicators for at least two pilot programs. (See Heart Failure or Anticoagulation Service. )
  • begin to pursue perfect healthcare projects in at least five other major care areas. (See Targeted Areas of Care. )
  • train a sufficient proportion of the organization's staff in the skills needed to improve and redesign processes and systems to pursue perfect healthcare.
  • extend efforts to pursue perfect care processes to the services delivered by partnering organizations in the pilot areas. (See Sharing Results: Local Partnerships. )
  • adopt key infrastructure changes across the organization that were identified during the pilot projects. (See Organizational Transformation. )
  • complete a quantitative analysis supporting the case for making quality a central business strategy within five years from the start of Phase II (April 2007).
  • demonstrate detectable changes in the entire organization's culture relevant to the pursuit of excellence, the priority of quality improvement, and the improvement of patient safety.
Organizational Improvement Goals
The fundamental groundwork required to achieve the Organizational Goals and Promises of the Pursuing Perfection grant program is system redesign and organizational transformation. Aside from the application of medical science, systemic reorganization is vital to effect perfect patient care. Efforts in areas such as reliability engineering, human factors engineering, human resource development, communication, and behavioral psychology will align clinical outcomes with best practice resource utilization in order to achieve desired efficiencies while maintaining the value equation of cost and quality. (See Strategic Reorganization to Support Perfection Goals. )

The primary improvement goals within the organizational structure include:
      the delivery of population-based, appropriate clinical services, ranging from prevention and wellness to community-based primary care.
      continuation of the hospital’s existing efforts to monitor cost and quality variables.
      systematic process redesign across the continuum to assure effective patient diagnosis, treatment planning, deployment of staff, and patient education.
      adoption of recognized clinical guidelines and evidenced-based practices.
      routine use of preventative screening practices in the primary care setting.
Effecting Change: Sharing Results
to Realize National Reform
Outlining the lessons learned in the process, Hackensack University Medical Center will share the results of its efforts with healthcare organizations across the country so that others can discover and apply the latest, most relevant knowledge that will lead to “Pursuing Perfection” in patient care. (See Sharing Results. )

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