2010 Physician Partnership Award Winner: Jewish Hospital & St. Mary’s Healthcare

Building a Performance Improvement Engine in Cardiovascular Surgery

Jewish Hospital & St. Mary’s HealthCare is a combined 725-bed tertiary care and community hospital based in Louisville, Ky., that joined the Crimson Initiative in 2007 in order to provide physicians with timely access to performance data. Dr. Lynn Simon, Senior Vice President and Chief Medical Officer, initially deployed Crimson with outcomes managers in the care management department, each of whom partnered with a physician chair from the six key service lines across the organization. Working together, these pairs were tasked with integrating regular review of Crimson performance data into service line meetings and using the data to launch improvement projects.

In the cardiovascular surgery group, the outcomes manager and physician leaders immediately identified opportunities for improvement on both core measure performance as well as length of stay. In response, the group began development of standardized order sets for a variety of diagnoses in order to improve compliance with best practice guidelines. Across 2009, the group was able to achieve a 1.6 day reduction in length of stay for cardiovascular surgery diagnoses and boost overall SCIP core measure compliance by 28%.

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  Watch Part 1

  Developing Experts in Care Management

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  Watch Part 2

  Embedding Evidence-Based Standards for Cardiac Care

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  Watch Part 3

  Gaining Respect from the Medical Staff