SHM President: ‘Take Charge of QI’
NATIONAL HARBOR, Md. — The HM movement over the past two decades has matured into a defined specialty, but must now take charge of quality improvement (QI) in hospital settings if it hopes to “go to that next level,” the new SHM president declared at the annual meeting this morning.
“We’re at a stage as an organization that we need to continue to do the quality education efforts, but we need to start rising to that next level, which is the quality execution and solutions,” said President Jeffrey Wiese, MD, FACP, SFHM, associate professor of medicine at Tulane University Health Sciences Center in New Orleans.
Dr. Wiese said that within five years he expects SHM to have crafted an interactive database listing all HM-led QI projects. He envisions the information as a resource for hospitalists looking to lead projects, as well as a “grand menu of potential practice improvement modules” to satisfy the new Focused Practice in Hospital Medicine Maintenance of Certification through the American Board of Internal Medicine (ABIM).
“We have great heterogeneity in the society,” Dr. Wiese said after his address. “Some people are quality experts because they received great training from SHM, Intermountain Health, IHI, but then there are many members that are interested and really want to be that quality expert, but are to the left on the continuum, still learning how to do it.”
The new president capped a morning of speechifying from outgoing President Scott Flanders, MD, SFHM, director of the hospitalist division, University of Michigan Health System, Ann Arbor, and SHM CEO Larry Wellikson, MD, SFHM. Both reveled in HM’s growth, but agreed that to sustain that momentum more of the estimated 30,000 hospitalists in the U.S. need to get more involved in promoting and pushing the practice.
“We really need to engage everybody,” Dr. Flanders said. “We need all 60,000 hands on deck.”
