I believe that healthcare quality and Healthcare Quality Week (Oct 18-24) likely mean very different things to people depending on their age, experiences and expectations. Some might say that healthcare quality is ensuring a safe, affordable accessible system of care. Others might suggest that healthcare quality simply means that your doctor and staff are able to meet the needs of you and your family. And then some of us would say healthcare quality is all-of-the-above and then some.

I think healthcare quality is about equipping our physicians, nurses, hospitals, nursing homes and other settings with tools to go above and beyond to care for us and our families while preventing harm. It’s about making sure the front-line staff is trained to prevent harm by using evidence-based tools and resources to track infections, pressure ulcers, readmissions and cardiac episodes and can use that knowledge to generate increased positive outcomes.
Very few children say, “I want to be a healthcare quality improvement professional when I grow up”, but many children want to be nurses and doctors.

Most of my career exposure when I was a child was to medicine growing up in a family full of physicians and working from a young age at the front desk of these practices. The older I became and the more I worked in the clinical setting both in high school and college, I was certain that clinical administration was going to be my future. I was so certain that I pursued a Master’s in Healthcare Administration.

Then my mindset about population health and widespread healthcare quality shifted outside of my small realm of possibility to the “what if” I can help make a difference for all different providers types and settings. What if my input and knowledge could help prevent unintended patient harm?

Qsource—the Quality Improvement Network-Quality Improvement Organization (QIN-QIO) for Alabama, Indiana, Kentucky, Mississippi and Tennessee—has been granted the opportunity by The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) to not only make these changes at the State level, but now at the regional level.

I’m proud to say that it’s something in which I am now deeply involved. From experience, I know that quality improvement through patient and provider advocacy empowers everyone to help make the changes necessary to our system to improve outcomes, lower cost and save lives.

To me, that’s what Healthcare Quality Week is all about.

Learn more about Healthcare Quality Week, Oct. 18-24, and how Qsource partners with others to improve healthcare quality.

Alyssa Chase

Alyssa Chase Tanner, MHA, is the Tennessee Quality Program Director for Tennessee. She offers twelve years administrative and managerial experience in primary care and specialist practices, sales and provider relations for insurance carriers, as well as quality improvement (QI) experience in numerous other clinical settings. Chase’s knowledge and insight into the day-to-day workings of medical practices facilitates provision of QI expertise and technical assistance in electronic health records (EHRs) and quality reporting. Chase is a member of the Tennessee Medical Group Management Association chapter (TMGMA), and is a past member of the Board of Directors for the Mid-South Medical Group Management Association. She is on the Board of Directors for the Wings Cancer Foundation. Chase is also serving her third year on the Board of Examiners for the Tennessee Center for Performance Excellence.