Annotated Bibliography: Understanding Ambulatory Care Practices in the Context of Patient Safety and Quality Improvement.

The ambulatory care setting is an increasingly important component of the patient safety conversation. Inpatient safety is the primary focus of the vast majority of safety research and interventions, but the ambulatory setting is actually where most medical care is administered. Recent attention has shifted toward examining ambulatory care in order to implement better health care quality and safety practices. This annotated bibliography was created to analyze and augment the current literature on ambulatory care practices with regard to patient safety and quality improvement. By providing a thorough examination of current practices, potential improvement strategies in ambulatory care health care settings can be suggested. A better understanding of the myriad factors that influence delivery of patient care will catalyze future health care system development and implementation in the ambulatory setting

Organizing the U.S. Health Care Delivery System for High Performance

Analyzes the fragmentation of the healthcare delivery system and makes policy recommendations -- including payment reform, regulatory changes, and infrastructure -- for creating mechanisms to coordinate care across providers and settings

Achieving the Potential of Health Care Performance Measures: Timely Analysis of Immediate Health Policy issues

The United States is on the cusp of a new era, with greater demand for performance information, greater data availability, and a greater willingness to integrate performance information into public policy. This era has immense promise to deliver a learning health care system that encourages collaborative improvements in systems-based care, improves accountability, helps consumers make important choices, and improves quality at an acceptable cost. However, to curtail the possibility of unintended adverse consequences, it is important that we invest in developing sound measures, understand quality measures' strengths and limitations, study the science of quality measurement, and reduce inaccurate inferences about provider performance

Embracing Accountability: Physician Leadership, Public Reporting, and Teamwork in the Wisconsin Collaborative for Healthcare Quality

Based on interviews, presents a case study of how a "bottom-up" physician-led group of healthcare providers realized voluntary public reporting of comparative performance information as a quality improvement tool. Shares requirements and lessons learned

Gundersen Lutheran Health System: Performance Improvement Through Partnership

Highlights Fund-defined attributes of an ideal system and best practices such as using data for benchmarking, increasing transparency, and driving improvement; investing in primary care and disease management; and hiring engineers to improve operations

Innovations in pay and grading in NHS trusts

This report examines innovations in pay and grading in 10 NHS trusts in England using data collected from March 2000 to January 2001, ie prior to the implementation of Agenda for Change. These 10 trusts, which varied in size, function, and location, were selected primarily to illustrate a variety of different approaches to pay and grading. The research utilised a qualitative methodology, with interviews of managers on a one to one basis, group interviews with lay union representatives, focus groups with staff and the inspection of documents. This study focused on four questions: • Did local pay resolve the problems associated with Whitley? • What were the consequences of local pay? • Were the trusts’ pay systems introduced in line with 'new pay' ideas and current trends in reward management? • What factors were critical to the success of developing and implementing local pay systems in NHS trusts