Dear AHI Members,

We would like to share news with you.

Highlights

• Become Involved, Renew your membership at http://a4hi.org/?q=node/6
• New Board Members are Boel Andersson-Gäre, MD, PhD, Ileana Piña MD, Debbi Honey, RN, MHA, CPHQ, FACHE, CENP, Geoffrey C. Lamb, MD, and Mark Splaine MD
• New AHI officers beginning July are Mark Splaine, President (Dartmouth University Medical Center, Hanover, New Hampshire, USA), Paul Miles (American Board of Pediatrics), Greg Ogrinc, Secretary-Treasurer (Dartmouth University Medical Center), and Doug Wakefield, Secretary-Treasurer Elect (University of Missouri-Columbia)
• Review of the Scientific Symposium. Best Presentation Award recipient was Stephen E. Muething, MD
• Inaugural AHI Leadership Award recipient was Paul B. Batalden MD
• Inaugural AHI Duncan Neuhauser Curricular Award first place went to Memorial University in Newfoundland for the curriculum "Teaching Collaboration Competencies in Clinical Training: Where the Rubber Hits the Road." Olga Heath, PhD, Hubert White, MD, David Craig, MD, Ted Callanan, MD, Patti McCarthy, MsC.

Membership

We have two key goals: 1) grow AHI membership and 2) Make AHI meaningful to members. AHI is a young, developing society. We have a growing membership but need you to help market AHI by word-of-mouth. And, we need you to renew your membership.
Visit the AHI web site (http://a4hi.org/?q=node/6).

Concurrently, members and potential members want value from AHI. The value is in the membership. There are many ways you can become involved: existing committee activities, establishing a new interest group or networking activity, producing and sharing information, and nurturing associations with similar groups and organizations. Renew your commitment and help us grow into a critical mass voicing influence and reinforcing quality improvement and patient safety.

New AHI Board Members

The Nomination Committee was charged with finding new board members. Dr. Mark Splaine assumes the presidency of AHI next academic year, we felt is most appropriate to name Dr. Splaine to the board. With the continuing move toward member outreach, we solicited nominations from the general membership for open board positions. Our members could nominate an individual or members could nominate themselves. We contacted these nominees, presented a description of responsibilities, and asked for time and effort commitment. We are pleased to announce that this process resulted in an additional four new board members who will serve a three year term beginning July 1.

This slate for the Board of Directors includes geographic distribution (Europe & USA), gender (male and females), profession (Debbi's profession includes both nursing and medical health administration), academic and non-academic, education and research, and strong commitment and engagement in quality improvement. All are involved with additional societies and organizations that would help strengthen connections and further establish AHI. All have expressed strong interest in furthering AHI. All have consistently attended our Scientific Symposium. All occupy influential positions. Allow be to introduce our new board members; they are:

Boel Andersson Gäre MD, PhD
Professor, Jönköping Academy for Improvement of Health and welfare
Jönköping University, Sweden
Boel is a pediatrician by training and professor with the Jönköping Academy for Improvement of Health and Welfare and of the Jönköping University School of Health Sciences, Quality Improvement and Leadership. She has a long standing career as clinician, researcher, teacher and leader. She is CEO of Futurum which is the research and clinical training unit of the Jönköping County Council health system and project leader for master education development in "Leadership for Improvement in Health and Welfare." She is serving on various boards within clinical and academic organizations. She has shown an exceptional ability to combine practical quality improvement work and research. She has extensive experience in all aspects of quality improvement and is a treasured teacher in many parts of the world.

Ileana Piña MD MPH
Professor of Medicine
Case Western Reserve University
Illeana has focused the past five years on quality improvement efforts. She is a former Quality Scholar at the Veteran's Administration in Cleveland, Ohio and remains an attending physician in the Cleveland Ohio VAMC. She has experience as a board member on other prominent boards, such as American Heart Association activities, and is currently on the Quality Council of the American Heart Association and on the Hospital to Home Initiative of IHI and the American College of Cardiology. She chairs the World Health Federation Council on Cardiac Rehabilitation and Prevention. She is NIH funded on "Recovery Post Exercise: an Ancillary Study of the HF-Action Trial and has a long list of previously funded projects. She is on the Editorial Advisory Board of Cardiology News and Editorial Board member of the Journal of American College of Cardiology, the Journal of Congestive Heart Failure, and American Journal of Cardiology. Illeana was the 2009 keynote speaker at the American Heart Association Women's Hearth Health Conference and she travel internationally for presentations, lectures, and speaking engagements. She is member of the writing committees for the NQF Steering Committee of Outcomes Measures and the Focused Update on Heart Failure Performance Measures. Illeana has been a member of AHI for four years and looks forward to contributing toward the direction, policy, and visibility of AHI.

Debbi Honey, RN, MHA, CPHQ, FACHE, CENP
Vice President Clinical Leadership Development and Clinical Operations
Robert Wood Johnson Executive Nurse Fellow
Catholic Health Initiatives, Denver, Colorado
Debbie has been vice president of clinical leadership and clinical operations of the Catholic Health Initiatives since 1998. CHI is a national nonprofit health organization with headquarters in Denver that includes 79 hospitals, 40 long-term care, assisted-and residential-living facilities, and 2 community health services organizations in 20 states. Her work with this large healthcare system involves nursing research efforts, quality and outcome measurement, patient safety and risk management, clinical competency, and service line development. She is responsible for new initiatives and programs focusing on clinical leadership development across the continuum of staff nurse to nurse executive. She has a masters in health administration and is a fellow of the American College of Healthcare Executives and certified in Executive Nursing Practice of the American Organization of Nursing Executives. She is a Robert Wood Johnson Executive Nurse Fellow and board member of Women Business Leaders of the US Health Care Industry Foundation. She brings her extensive experience in business management, quality improvement, and nursing education to the board of AHI.

Geoffrey C. Lamb, MD
Professor, General Internal Medicine
Associate Director, Joint Quality Office
Froedtert Hospital and the Medical College of Wisconsin
Geoff is the general internal medicine coordinator of the Excellence in Clinical Education and Leadership primary care faculty development program funded by the HHS/HRSA. As associate director in the Joint Quality Office, he chairs the quality review committee that is responsible for public reporting activities, adverse event investigations, and ambulatory activities. He chaired the Society of General Internal Medicine workshop committee for patient safety and quality improvement and is member of the AHRQ Prevent Quality Indicators committee. He has Commonwealth Foundation grant to study "Does Public Reporting Impact Quality of Care in Wisconsin?" and HRSA funding for "Serving Through Learning: Faculty Development for Master Educators and Community Preceptors". Geoff states "it is the combination of dedication to creating a foundation of scientific rigor and enthusiasm for education that makes the AHI stand out relative to its peers."

Mark Splaine MD MS
Associate Professor
Departments of Medicine and of Community and Family Medicine
Dartmouth Medical School
Hanover, New Hampshire
Mark is co-chief of general internal medicine and serves on the medical center quality council. He teaches in the master degree program at Dartmouth's Center for the Evaluative Clinical Sciences. He is Director of the VA National Quality Scholars Fellowship program, a two-year post-residency fellowship program that trains physicians in the scholarship of the improvement of health care and which expanded in 2009 to train nurse quality scholars. He is a founding member and active leader in the IHI Health Professions Education Collaborative. Mark lectures and publishes on quality improvement, quality measurement, clinical management, and systems-based practice. Mark is a founding member of AHI and his term as AHI President begins July, 2010.

New Academy for Healthcare Improvement Officers

We also received nominations from our membership for new AHI officers. They are:

President-Elect
Paul Miles MD
Senior Vice President for Quality and Maintenance of Certification
American Board of Pediatrics
Chapel Hill, North Carolina
Paul is a pediatrician, adjunct professor in the Duke University Department of Pediatrics, and the Senior Vice President for Quality and Maintenance of Certification for the American Board of Pediatrics. Through the certification program, almost 50,000 pediatricians over the next 7 years will have to demonstrate competency in quality improvement and they will have to show that they can assess and systematically improve their quality of care. He has been involved in helping develop and spread national quality improvement collaboratives, standards for QI projects qualifying for Certification credits, web based QI modules, and QI knowledge self assessment for physicians. Paul also serves on the executive committee of the AMA Physician Consortium for Performance Improvement, the Quality Council for the National Association of Children's Hospitals (NACHRI), quality committees for the American Academy of Pediatrics, and the task force on Maintenance of Certification for the American Board of Medical Specialties. He is a member of the board of directors of the American Board of Family Medicine Foundation and serves on the national advisory committee of the Improving Performance in Practice. Paul has been traveling about the country, and world, promoting quality improvement as a field and the strategy for transforming our health delivery system. In 2008, he was honored with the David Bergman Award for Pediatric Quality. He is well connected to leaders across every professional and academic society as well as IHI, NICHQU, and AHRQ. Paul is a founding member of AHI; he is a visionary and he will put his organization skills at work for strategic planning and promotion of AHI.

Secretary-Treasurer Elect
Doug Wakefield PhD
Director, Center of Health Care Quality
University of Missouri-Columbia
Columbia, Missouri
Doug has a doctorate in hospital and health administration. He is professor in the Department of Health Management and Informatics, University of Missouri, and Director of the Center for Health Care Quality. He has over 100 publications, teaches courses "Methods of Health Services Research", "Hospital Organization and Management", and "US Healthcare System", and has a wealth of research and administrative experience in academic and healthcare settings. He is Associate Editor for the journal Quality and Safety in Health Care and member of the American College of Health Care Executives, Academy Health, American Public Health Association. He is on the advisory board for the Missouri Center for Patient Safety. Doug has extensive experience in building and coordinating collaborations of interdisciplinary researchers, and healthcare delivery organizations and professionals. Doug states: "I believe AHI can play a central role in expanding common ground by creating targeted initiatives linking members of the improvement science research community with healthcare organizations and professionals in areas of common interest."

Secretary-Treasurer
Greg Ogrinc MD MS
Assistant Professor
Departments of Medicine and of Community and Family Medicine
Dartmouth Medical School
Hanover, New Hampshire
Greg is a general internist at the White River Junction VA Medical Center, director of the Office of Research and Innovation in Medical Education at Dartmouth Medical School, and assistant fellowship director and Senior Scholar of the VA National Quality Scholars Program. His focus is on health care quality and patient safety systems of patient care and clinician education. Greg is Associate Editor for the journal Quality and Safety in Health Care. He is actively involved in the IHI Health Professions Education Collaborative and the IHI Open School Chapters. He recently coauthored the book "Fundamentals of Health Care Improvement: A Guide to Improving Your Patients" and he was involved in the development of the SQUIRE guidelines. Greg was appointed to the AHI Board in July 2008 and has graciously agreed to fill the vacancy of the 2009 Secretary-Treasurer Elect office.

15th International Scientific Symposium on Improving the Quality and Value of Health Care -- December 7, 2009, Orlando, Florida

The program consisted of 14 oral presentations selected from 79 submissions, featured talk by Patrick Conway, MD, MSc, Chief Medical Officer at the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) in the Office of the Assistant Secretary for Planning and Evaluation, entitled "Comparative Effectiveness Research: Implications for Quality and Value in Health Care", AHI and VA Quality Scholar Posters, and Duncan Neuhauser Poster Discussion Session. Our attendance was over 200.

The Award for Best Presentation went to:
Stephen E. Muething, MD
Assistant VP for Patient Safety
Cincinnati Children's Hospital Medical Center
Cincinnati, Ohio, USA
Title of his presentation: "A Program to Reduce Serious Safety Events Throughout an Academic Hospital"

AHI Leadership Award for Advancing the Scholarship of Health Care Improvement.

Inaugural 2009 Recipient was Paul B. Batalden, MD. Future awards will be the Paul B Batalden AHI Leadership Award for Advancing the Scholarship of Health Care Improvement.

Inaugural Duncan Neuhauser Curricular Innovation Award in Healthcare Improvement.

First place: "Teaching Collaboration Competencies in Clinical Training: Where the Rubber Hits the Road" submitted by Olga Heath, PhD, Hubert White, MD, David Craig, MD, Ted Callanan, MD, Patti McCarthy, MsC. Memorial University in Newfoundland.

With this curriculum, both student clerks and residents are led through the process of developing interprofessional collaborative relationships while completing their Psychiatry rotation.

Second place: "An Adaptable Interdisciplinary Methodology for Integrated QI Curriculum into Undergraduate Health Science Education" submitted by Christina Southay, Talyor Bassingthwaite, Katherine Stevenson, and Tanya Verrall. Saskatchewan Health Quality Council.