The task force, scheduled to issue a report in April, will be headed by Norman Rizk, professor of medicine and senior associate dean for clinical affairs, and Kevin Tabb, a physician and chief quality/ medical information officer at SHC. The working group includes clinical department chairs, medical staff, patient care service representatives and others.
Pizzo, who announced the task force in his March 12 Dean’s Newsletter, noted that “quality metrics are rapidly becoming the yardsticks to compare and contrast clinical programs at hospitals and medical centers. They will increasingly be used to guide payments to doctors and to hospitals - through Medicare and private insurers.
“… The goal of this working group is to develop the mechanisms and cultural transformations necessary to enable SHC to become a ‘top 10’ institution in quality of care. This goal will translate into actions that will take place at the clinical department or division level and that will result in both short term measures of success as well as the long term changes necessary to sustain high quality programs.”
The dean added, “It is certainly important to perform well in whatever comparative assessments are made - but it is equally if not more important to strive to achieve the highest quality performance simply because that is the right thing to do.”
-Courtesy of
the March 12 Dean’s Newsletter. http://deansnewsletter.stanford.edu/archive/03.12_07.html
