Organizations needed to join EOL collaborative
Organizations needed to join EOL collaborative
Be on the cutting edge
Several spots remain open for the Boston-based Institute for Healthcare Improvement’s (IHI) collaborative on end-of-life care. The one-year intensive project, which will allow your organization to significantly affect change, begins with the first of three learning sessions, scheduled for July 20-22 in Landsdowne, VA, near Dulles Airport, which is just outside Washington, DC.
Participating organizations may send a three-member team to the three-day learning session. Subsequent sessions will be held in October 1997 and March 1998 at sites to be announced. Throughout the year, collaborative teams receive ongoing consultation and support from experts and peers thorough on-site meetings, conference calls, e-mail, listservs, and newsletters.
The IHI’s breakthrough series on end-of-life care will work on improving comfort, dignity, and satisfaction with care at the end of life while reducing unwanted, nonbeneficial care, says Joanne Lynn, MD, director of the Center to Improve Care of the Dying at George Washington University in Washington, DC.
Lynn will head the collaborative, along with an advisory team. The team will present well-tested ideas for changes in prevailing practice and coach participating organizations into rapid improvement, she explains.
The collaborative is looking to make changes in these areas of care:
• using palliative/supportive care;
• improving pain management;
• meeting the needs of families;
• improving communication among family and health professionals;
• reducing transitions at the end of life;
• decision making about treatment;
• making advanced planning work;
• identifying nonbeneficial care;
• overcoming administrative/legal barriers to optimal care;
• educating and supporting professionals;
• promoting multidisciplinary care;
• increasing community support for end-of- life care.
Each participating organization focuses on one topic and pays its own administrative and travel costs. Applicants who have concerns about resources for attending the learning sessions but could commit substantial resources to implementing changes in their organization should apply pending the availability of foundation support.
[Editor’s note: For more information, contact IHI. Telephone: (617) 754-4800.]
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