About Us
 The
Community Emergency Healthcare
Initiative (CEHI) is a non-profit effort which was
created to serve caregivers in small community hospitals delivering
frontline emergency services.
CEHI has been established in loving memory of former astronaut
Charles "Pete" Conrad.
Introduction
Performance Excellence
Transfer Enterprise
Vision
The vision is to drive quality and safety performance in
frontline community hospital Emergency Departments (EDs).
Mission
The mission is to identify, develop, and transfer world
class Emergency Care Performance
Solutions that will equip hospitals to dramatically
impact integrated care and operations processes.
Initiative Deliverables
The ultimate goal of this performance excellence and transfer
enterprise is to create new knowledge channels that will provide
a continuous flow of concepts, tools, and resources that empower
thousands of community providers to deliver optimal healthcare
performance.
Capsule Summary
To uniquely and specifically address the emergency healthcare
crisis, CEHI will be launching a program that will equip caregivers
and administrators from small community hospitals to drive
high performance improvement in their EDs. The world's best
quality improvement leaders will train them. Make no mistake,
this is not an academic program, but an initiative designed,
led, and supported by a faculty with a track record of real
success in equipping performance teams to make dramatic improvement
and hold their gains.
The Institute for Healthcare Improvement (IHI) led by Dr.
Don Berwick, the most eminent authority in quality and patient
safety, will undertake an Idealized Design program intended
to identify, test, and develop redesigned principles for EDs.
Using their Breakthrough Series system, more than 30 community
hospital teams will be simultaneously equipped with concepts,
tools, and resources to drive gains in performance that heretofore
have not been possible. A state of the art Knowledge Management
(KM) system will be designed, built, and operated by the Texas
Medical Institute of Technology (TMIT), another not-for-profit
organization and leader in healthcare innovation transfer.
Dr. Charles Denham, who is an authority in innovation transfer
and patient safety innovations, leads TMIT.
Background
CEHI has been established in loving memory of Pete Conrad.
Pete was one of the most accomplished and highly respected
astronauts in the space program. He participated in the Gemini,
Apollo, and Skylab programs. He commanded the second lunar
landing and received the Congressional Space Medal of Honor
for his rescue of Skylab. Click
here for biographical information via NASA website
or see www.peteconrad.org.
 
Leading experts agree that U.S. healthcare is in desperate
need of systems redesign. The objective of the CEHI effort
is to bring world-class systems redesign concepts, tools,
and resources to help drive safety and quality performance
impact in frontline community and small hospitals.
Guiding Principles
- Concepts, tools, and resources will be fully and completely
shared with care providers, suppliers, consumers, and purchasers
in the global care community.
- All activities and knowledge will be organized and integrated
using the principles of a patient centered, evidence based
medicine, and systems re-design approach as recommended
in the Institute of Medicine (IOM) reports.
- State of the art KM methods will be used to create a Practicing
Community of collaborators to support all interested administrators,
caregivers, suppliers and consumers. None of the knowledge
assembled or created will be held as proprietary.
- Conflict of interest will be avoided by strictly adhering
to an open collaboration policy such that no stakeholder
group in healthcare shall be given any advantage in participation
over any other group.
- Intellectual property that is previously owned by collaborators
will remain their own.
Program Partners
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Institute
for Healthcare Improvement (IHI) is widely recognized
as the gold standard in healthcare improvement methodologies.
IHI will provide leadership of a specific Community ED
Idealized Design program that will develop deployable
improvement methods. It will also lead a Community ED
Breakthrough Series to train small community hospitals.
For more information on IHI see www.ihi.org.
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Texas
Medical Institute of Technology (TMIT) will provide
an operations base and KM platform for collaborators.
It will supervise the design, construction, and operation
of the Community ED knowledge management system. It will
recruit expert panels and healthcare supplier teams. It
is a 501(c)3 tax exempt organization. Founded in 1984,
TMIT has a longstanding history of patient safety development
activities. For more information on TMIT see www.tmit1.org. |
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Health
Care Concepts corporation (HCC), a major donor
to TMIT, has donated startup funds and will donate performance
solution measures, innovation transfer and market channels
support, operations space, and staff. For more information
on HCC see www.hcc1.com.
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Research Collaborators
Numerous sponsor organizations will provide funding and knowledge
assets. These include academic organizations, global corporations,
and professional societies.
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The
Institute of Medicine (IOM) has asked CEHI to collaborate
on ED measures and process improvement in rural and frontline
hospitals. CEHI has been invited to participate in its
first national IOM symposium addressing innovation in
the spring of 2002, showcase its work, and present awards
to the collaborators from the emergency medicine initiative.
For more information on IOM see www.iom.edu. |
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NASA
and TMIT have a NASA Space Act Agreement to focus on the
transfer of aerospace methods to healthcare improvement.
This CEHI collaboration will implement aviation and aerospace
methodologies such as crew resource management and reliability
systems design to optimize emergency care. For more information
on NASA see www.nasa.gov. |
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Health
Resources and Services Administration (HRSA) and
TMIT are undertaking a rapid evaluation of emergency services
and imaging issues across the 3,200 HRSA community health
centers and affiliated clinics nationwide. The intent
is to identify quality issues that can be addressed by
the CEHI effort and that can be made available to HRSA
caregivers delivering care to 11 million people across
the nation. For more information on HRSA see www.hrsa.gov.
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Value Proposition
- Clinical and operational process performance are intrinsically
linked. They drive financial outcomes of every healthcare
enterprise.
- The CEHI effort will develop and drive market penetration
of concepts, tools, and resources to optimize clinical and
operational performance in the community ED.
- An example deliverable of initiative includes the development
of a emergency services “trigger tool” to identify
high impact process improvement opportunities. This tool
will be developed using know how obtained while developing
a very successful "trigger tool" for adverse drug
events.
Venture Design
- Structure: Collaborative
Venture
- Capitalization: None
required
- Ownership: All work
product will be rapidly released to the public domain
- Management: Operations
and Knowledge Management – TMIT, Educational Initiatives
- IHI
- Economic Model: Grants
to the non-profit institutes (TMIT and IHI) will be used
to pay for ED programs and support community ED teams travel
and expenses. The initiative will provide all services to
community hospitals at no cost. Participating hospitals
will have to match CEHI support with a dollar for dollar
investment in the own ED as directed by the ED Performance
Teams.
Leadership
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