Section 7. Sharing Results

Internally

Reporting about performance improvement projects and results widely throughout the affected departments closes the feedback loop and reinforces the need for ongoing quality improvement efforts (Figure 4). Success breeds success, and as front-line staff grow to appreciate their ability to effect and sustain improvements, they will want to do more. Widely reporting the results of multiunit or multi-department initiatives helps create a culture of transparency and openness. Units given the opportunity to compare their performance relative to other units will develop a healthy competition to improve. The use of emergency department (ED) dashboards provides a snapshot of key process variables of particular interest to stakeholders.

Figure 4. Data reporting practices at six Urgent Matters Learning Network (UMLN) II hospitals

Externally

As mentioned earlier in this guide, the UMLN II evaluation found that a common facilitator to improvement was the internal accountability and momentum created through participation in a collaborative. While not all hospitals can participate in a formal collaborative, they can build momentum by sharing their results with external stakeholders through community partnerships, written publications, and conference presentations. Some examples include community social service organizations that work with the hospital, other hospitals within a system or in the hospital's metropolitan or State hospital association, local newspapers and blogs, trade publications (e.g., Hospitals & Health Networks, Modern Healthcare), peer-reviewed journals (e.g., Joint Commission Journal on Quality and Patient Safety, Journal of Emergency Medicine, Journal of Emergency Nursing), and professional societies (e.g., Society for Academic Emergency Medicine, American College of Emergency Physicians, and Emergency Nurses Association).

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