New Jersey Council of Teaching Hospitals Joins NJ Health Care Quality Institute Leadership Council

2/23/2004

From: David L. Knowlton of the New Jersey Health Care Quality Institute, 609-393-4931 or dknowlton@compuserve.com

TRENTON, N.J., Feb. 23 -- The New Jersey Health Care Quality Institute (NJHCQI) today announced that it has added the New Jersey Council of Teaching Hospitals (NJCTH) to its Leadership Council in a unique partnership to further the cause of quality medicine in New Jersey. The two organizations pledged to work cooperatively for the reduction of medical errors in the state.

"This is an unprecedented opportunity to advance quality medical care in New Jersey," said NJHCQI Chairman David L. Knowlton. "Working together we can educate both medical professionals and consumers in an effort to reduce medical errors."

Dr. J. Richard Goldstein, president of the Council of Teaching Hospitals, said, "The Council's member hospitals have a unique responsibility to teach doctors and other medical providers both the skills and awareness which will enable them to practice medicine safely. This partnership with the New Jersey Health Care Quality Institute gives us the opportunity to work cooperatively toward a shared goal: Improved medical quality in New Jersey."

Dr. Goldstein served as the commissioner of Health of New Jersey during the administration of Governor Thomas H. Kean. He also served his nation as a Flight Surgeon in the United States Air Force. He has served as president of the New Jersey Council of Teaching Hospitals for the past two years.

Knowlton served as the deputy commissioner of Health for the State of New Jersey also during the administration of Governor Kean. He has also served on the faculty of the Managed Healthcare Congress, Governor Whitman's Transition Team and the Commissioner of Health's Select Advisory Group on National Health Reform.

The two pledged to immediately begin working on two key initiatives:

Development and implementation of a Patient Safety Curriculum for physicians modeled after a program designed by the Massachusetts Medical Society. The new program seeks to establish New Jersey as one of the leaders in the development of techniques for improving patient safety in both office-based and hospital health care settings. The curriculum will focus on the problems facing health care providers regarding medication errors and communicating critical test results.

The Patient Safety Curriculum project has three goals:

-- Increase awareness of contributors to medication errors and errors in communication of critical test results in the office- based practices/ambulatory settings

-- Provide specific patient-safety improvement strategies and tools for medication safety and communication of critical test results

-- Demonstrate how these improvement strategies can be implemented successfully in office-based practices/ambulatory settings

The second collaboration is a new "Patient Safety Reporting System" (PSRS) designed to receive "medical near-misses" and modeled after the Federal Aviation Administration's Aviation Safety Reporting System. The PSRS is an impartial, third-party web-based forum that invites patients and medical professionals to voluntarily and anonymously report any incidents that involve patient safety in the medical arena.

The goal of the PSRS is to act as a learning and educational tool to promote awareness of patient safety in medical settings through the sharing of information. The New Jersey Institute of Nursing is also a partner in this project.

The New Jersey Council of Teaching Hospitals (NJCTH) is the State's premier hospital network representing the teaching hospitals in the State. Founded in 1986 to recognize the unique nature and special needs of teaching hospitals, this non-profit consortium consists of Atlantic Health System, Cooper Health System, Meridian Health System, Robert Wood Johnson University Hospital, Robert Wood Johnson University Hospital at Hamilton, Somerset Medical Center, Trinitas Hospital, UMDNJ-University Hospital, University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey, and Warren Hospital.

Together, NJCTH institutions represent more than 34,000 health care professionals and 7,100 hospital beds; care for more than 312,000 inpatients and nearly 5,000,000 outpatients each year; total an aggregate budget in excess of $3,900,000,000 per year; and provide 33 percent of the state's charity care while constituting less than 20 percent of the state's hospitals. All three of New Jersey's Level I Trauma Centers are NJCTH hospitals, as are three of the State's seven Level II Trauma Centers.

NJCTH member institutions are dedicated not only to high- quality patient care, but to health professions education and sophisticated research as well. In affiliation with the University of Medicine and Dentistry's seven schools, NJCTH hospitals train more than 1,300 resident physicians, physician assistants, and nurse practitioners each year. Upon completion of these programs, many of these professionals are likely to remain in the state.

NJCTH's mission as an organization is to provide leadership in the development of Centers of Excellence in health care delivery, education, and research, and to serve as the optimal setting for the provision of outstanding patient care and for the education of health care professionals

Founded in 1997, the New Jersey Health Care Quality Institute is a non-profit foundation. Its purpose is to "undertake projects that will ensure that quality, accountability and cost containment are all closely linked to the delivery of health care services in New Jersey." NJHCQI fosters collaboration amongst all stakeholders in the State's health care delivery system so that purchasers and consumers of health care services will realize the benefits of this linkage to quality, accountability and cost containment.

The NJHCQI seeks to empower health care purchasers and consumers by publishing the results of objective research, comparative data on providers, and other pertinent educational information so that both purchasers and consumers may adopt value-based purchasing practices and be able to make informed decisions on the merits of various health care programs, treatments and services.

The NJHCQI was designated as the lead agency in New Jersey for the national Leapfrog Group effort in April 2002.

Those serving on the NJHCQI Board of Directors include: Former Governor Jim Florio; Andrea Aughenbaugh, CEO, New Jersey State Nurses Association; George Laufenberg, administrator, New Jersey Carpenters Fund; Len Leto, manager, Policy and Planning, State Health Benefits Program & president-elect, State & Local Government Benefits Association; Lou Marturana, (Retired) Public Service Electric & Gas; Suzanne M. Miller, Ph.D., Fox Chase Cancer Center; Judy Persichilli, CEO, St. Francis Medical Center; Dr. Michael Sedrish, medical director & Former director of Graduate, Medical Education & assistant director of Medicine, NYU Downtown Hospital; James C. Morford, ex-officio, managing director; and, Edward Geisler, ex-officio, executive director, Health Care Payers Coalition of New Jersey.