Washington, DC - Franciscan Health Systems (Tacoma, WA), The Hospice of the Florida Suncoast (Largo, FL), and the Louisiana State Penitentiary Hospice (Angola, LA) were the first recipients of the Circle of Life Award. The award honors exemplary work in care of the dying. According to Margaret Campbell, R.N., chairwoman of the awards committee, and American Hospital Association president Dick Davidson, "Those honored in the Circle of Life are innovators in serving patients near the end of life and their families." ABCD and the Center to Improve Care of the Dying congratulate the winners-and the six honorable mentions-for their dedication to making excellent care routine. Of the nine winners, four have participated in Breakthrough Series programs on improving care at the end of life--pointing to the usefulness of rapid-cycle quality improvement. For a copy of Touching the Future With Care, contact the AHA at www.aha.org or write to them at: Liberty Place, 325 7th St., NW, Washington, DC 20004-2802. To sign up for future Breakthrough Series, contact Casey Milne at cmilne@medicaring.org.
Boston, MA - More awards to friends of ABCD! Amos Bailey, M.D., the pioneering founder of the Balm of Gilead Center at Cooper Green Hospital in Birmingham, AL, received the Robert Wood Johnson (RWJ) Community Health Leadership Program award. The $100,000 award is given each year to ten people who "overcome daunting odds to expand access to health care and social services to underserved and isolated populations in their communities." Bailey's efforts-and those of his colleagues-have led to new collaborations in the community (among the hospital, faith communities, nursing homes, and the university) which, in turn, have improved care of the city's most vulnerable and most severely ill patients.
In print - Rand's Center to Improve Care of the Dying conducts research and quality improvement efforts nationwide. Recent publications describe this work at length. Care at the End of Life-Quality Improvement in End of Life Care: Insights from Two Collaboratives describes the quality improvement process led by the Center and the Institute for Healthcare Improvement (The Joint Commission Journal on Quality Improvement, May 2000). A May 2000 supplement to the Journal of the American Geriatrics Society (JAGS), Findings from SUPPORT and HELP) features 28 articles discussing issues such as treatment outcomes and practices, physician-patient communication, patient experiences as death nears, research methods, and perspectives and reviews. The supplement includes an article, "Rethinking Fundamental Assumptions: SUPPORT's Implications for Future Reform," which describes the need for system-level improvement and quality improvement in routine care of the dying.
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