In 2005, the Greater Cincinnati
Health Council (GCHC) began to work with the Ohio Hospital Association (OHA) on
the Greater Cincinnati Hospital Quality Improvement Project (HQIP). HQIP is a
voluntary project that brings together, in a non-competitive setting, businesses,
hospital quality management professionals, hospital medical directors and physicians
practicing out in the community. This locally designed, collaborative effort provides
performance measures and tools for hospitals to use to improve the quality of
care in their respective facilities as well as the community’s quality of
services as a whole. OHA has worked on similar projects in Dayton
and Columbus.
Over the past seven years, the Ohio
Hospital Association (OHA) has been able to work with Dayton hospitals to achieve important
improvements in the quality of care. Because of this work, the number of deaths for
patients with acute myocardial infarction (heart attack) went down in Dayton. Dayton
hospitals won the 2002 Ernest Codman Award, a national honor, for their
efforts. Over the past couple of years OHA
has also been working with the hospitals in the Columbus
area with the goal of achieving similar results, and is now pleased to work
with the Cincinnati
area hospitals in the same way.