Focus on Quality
University of Texas Medical School at Houston – Memorial Hermann Hospital TMC Campus:
Physician Safety and Quality Academy
The goal of the Academy is to blend the academic strengths of the medical school with the discipline and methodology of Learn Six Signs to improve clinical care using basic research principles. Participants are chosen yearly to select an area of improvement and create a plan of action. The initiative is lead by Dr. Eric Thomas, internationally recognized for his work and the UT System
2008 Project One – Khalid Almoosa, M.D.
Reducing Inappropriate Life Sustaining Therapies in the MICU
This project focused on the effect of an early family conference on end-of-life decisions for critically ill patients who die in the ICU. Early family conferences were conducted for patients identified to be at high risk of death to facilitate appropriate decisions to withdraw life-sustaining therapy and avoid futile care. Compared to a historical control group, the median ICU length of stay, used as a surrogate measure of use of life-sustaining therapy, decreased from 5 days to 3 days in the intervention group, and the time to withdrawal of life-sustaining therapy decreased from 5 days to 2 days. This project demonstrated that early family meetings facilitate appropriate end-of-life decisions and reduce futile care in the ICU.
2008 Project Two – Matthew Harbison, M.D.
The Improvement of Appropriate Use of VTE Prophylaxis in Hospitalized Medicine Patients
This project focused on the appropriate use of chemical prophylaxis on the resident ward teams. The accuracy in identifying and prescribing medications for venous thromboembolism (VTE) in medicine ward patients was measured. There was an educational session and the use of a VTE scoring tool for each admission was used. There was a marked increase in identification of appropriate subjects and reduced contraindicated patients. Plans were put in place to draft and obtain approval for standardized orders sets to be used for all medicine admissions which will include VTE risk assessment.
2009 Internal Medicine participants
