Quality and Clinical Conference
NRHA Quality and Clinical Conference
“Dynamics of Rural Healthcare”
An interactive conference for Quality Improvement Coordinators, Performance Improvement Coordinators, Rural Clinicians, Quality Improvement Organizations, and Nurses practicing on the front lines in rural healthcare.
Download the Quality and Clinical Conference Brochure here.
July 15-17, 2008
Sheraton San Diego Hotel & Marina
San Diego, CA
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The purpose of this conference is to improve the health of rural Americans by sharing the latest research, policy developments, and best practices that can enhance the quality of care in a rural clinical setting. At the Rural Quality and Clinical Conference, attendees will build their skills in the provision of quality rural HIV/AIDS clinical care, rural mental health issues, and medication safety. The latest research on improving quality in rural hospitals will be discussed, as well as opportunities for collaborating with Quality Improvement Organizations. The conference will also provide an update on the latest regulatory and legislative actions in Washington that may affect your rural clinical practice. In addition, the Rural Quality and Clinical Conference will offer a special segment for medical students, who will be introduced to the reality of rural clinical practice management, including a skill-building workshop on billing for medical services.
Agenda
Monday, July 14, 2008
(pre-conference workshops)
1:00 pm - 5:00 pm
Charlotte Halverson, RN, BSN, COHN-S, Health Training Coordinator, National Education Center for Agricultural Safety, and President, AgriSafe Network
Kelley Donham, MS, DVM, DACVPM, Director, Iowa's Center for Agricultural Safety and Health, and Vice President, AgriSafe Network
Delivering Occupational Agricultural Health Care to Farmers, Ranchers and Farm Workers (additional fee to attend)
This pre-conference workshop is hosted by the AgriSafe Network, an organization that focuses exclusively on the provision of health and safety services to farmers. Agriculture continues to be one of the most dangerous industries, but many agricultural injuries, diseases, and fatalities could be prevented. This workshop will identify the predominate occupational health problems faced by the farming community, discuss the components of an agricultural occupational health screening, recommend appropriate personal protective equipment for farmers, ranchers and agricultural workers, and will apply behavior theories in the prevention of farm-related illness and injuries.
Continuing education credit for nurses, nurse practitioners, and physicians will be available.
2:00 pm - 5:00 pm
Pre-Conference Rural Health Students Workshop Hosted by the National Rural Health Association (no fee)
The NRHA will be hosting this three hour workshop to meet with students interested in taking part in a Rural Health Students Group leadership discussion to contribute ideas towards the development of a Technical Assistance tool-kit for use by college chapters of the NRHA. The tool-kit is also intended for medical schools to secure institutional knowledge for creating and maintaining student rural health activities at the national level. The group will include representatives of institutions currently active in national and state level rural health activities. This forum will provide rural health students with an opportunity to meet other colleagues from around the country and engage in a meaningful conversation for enhancing rural health student leadership.
Tuesday, July 15, 2008 - Conference begins
7:30 am - 8:00 am
Paul Moore, DPh, NRHA President and Ray Christensen, MD, Chair, NRHA Clinical Constituency Group will welcome attendees to the 2008 NRHA Quality and Clinical Conference.
8:00 am - 9:15 am
Joe McCannon, Vice President, Institute for Healthcare Improvement
Keynote Address: Get On Board!
The Institute for Healthcare Improvement (IHI) helps accelerate change in health care by cultivating promising concepts for improving patient care and turning those ideas into action. The IHI also serves as one of the NRHA's leading partners for ensuring clinical quality and safety in rural facilities. Join us as Mr. McCannon sets the stage by discussing the challenge of improving quality and the vision of the IHI toward helping those in the field to meet those challenges.
9:45 am - 10:45 am
Jennifer P. Lundblad, PhD, MBA, President & CEO, Stratis Health
Karla Weng, MPH, CPHQ, Project Manager/Rural Hospital Interventions Quality Improvement Organization Support Center (HIQIOSC), Stratis Health
Leveraging QIO Rural Hospital Success into Future Opportunities
The QIO Program, as directed by the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, serves to assist consumers, physicians, hospitals, and other caregivers to refine care delivery systems to ensure patients are receiving quality care at the right time. This session will provide information on how QIOs and hospitals in rural areas focus on rural quality.
10:45 am - 12:00 pm
Katherine Jones, PT, PhD, , Assistant Professor Physical Therapy Education, University of Nebraska Medical Center
Anne Skinner, RHIA, College of Public Health, University of Nebraska Medical Center
Rural Safety Culture
This session will provide an overview of lessons learned from conducting the Agency for Healthcare Research & Quality (AHRQ) Hospital Survey on Patient Safety Culture in 29 Critical Access Hospitals. These lessons include: (1) the need to use a rural-adapted version of the survey, which ensures that even the smallest hospitals can identify differences in culture within job titles and work areas; (2) a working definition of safety culture that facilitates a strategy for organizational change; and (3) identification of specific tools that provide front-line staff with the behaviors needed to support the four components of an informed, safe culture.
12:00 pm - 1:15 pm
Networking Lunch
1:15 pm - 2:15 pm
Concurrent Sessions (Choose from A or B)
A.
Ricardo Nimo, MD, Internal Medicine, Field Memorial Community Hospital, Centreville, Mississippi
Rural HIV/AIDS Care
Come and hear the emerging issues and approaches in rural HIV/AIDS care from a physician with a firsthand account of how this disease and its impact are playing out in rural Mississippi.
B.
Katherine Jones, PhD, PT, University of Nebraska Medical Center
Anne Skinner, RHIA, University of Nebraska Medical Center
NRHA & Nebraska Center for Rural Health Research Culture of Quality Survey Pilot Program Part 1
This session will highlight hospitals participating in the pilot program and will allow the surveyors an opportunity to highlight survey analysis and receive feedback from hospitals currently in the program.
2:15 pm - 3:15 pm
Concurrent Sessions (Choose from A or B)
A.
Dennis Mohatt, MA, Deputy Director WICHE Center for Rural Mental Health Research
Rural Mental Health
Workforce shortages abound in rural areas, but mental health services are almost routinely absent in comparison to other specialties. This concurrent session will get you up to speed on what you need to know about these shortages and show you information on the latest rural mental health regulatory impacts.
B.
Katherine Jones, PhD, PT & Anne Skinner, RHIA, College of Public Health, University of Nebraska Medical Center
NRHA & Nebraska Center for Rural Health Research Culture of Quality Survey Pilot Program Part 2
This session will serve as a continuation of the pilot program and provider further opportunity for hospitals to engage in discussions surrounding the survey analysis.
3:15 - 5:30 pm
"Fun in the Sun" Break
Attendees are encouraged to take advantage of beautiful and sunny San Diego prior to the evening reception. Shopping, walks along the beach and site seeing are just minutes away from the hotel.
5:30 pm - 6:30 pm
2008 Quality and Clinical Conference Reception
Wednesday, July 16, 2008
8:00 am - 9:15 am
Dale Bratzler, DO, MPH, Medical Director, Hospital Interventions Quality Improvement Organization Support center and the Hospital Quality of Care Measures Special Study
Quality of Care in the Rural Environment
This session will provide a review of rural quality measures and the clinical lessons learned about providing quality care in the rural environment.
9:15 am - 10:30 pm
Mary Guyot, RN, Senior Consultant, Stroudwater Associates
Decreasing Potential for Inpatient Decubitus Ulcers through Performance Improvement
This session will provide a review of the use of root-cause-analysis to identify opportunities for improvement with end result of preventing decubitus ulcers.
11:00 - 12:15 pm
Dr. Sanjeev Arora, MD, Executive Vice Chair, Department of Internal Medicine, University of New Mexico Health Sciences Center
Extension for Community Health Outcomes
The U.S. Dept of Health and Human Services' Healthy People 2010 was one of the first programs to identify the elimination of health disparities as a national health goal. Rural, uninsured, and underserved populations represent three of the most significant sectors of inequality in the provision of health care in the U.S. system. Additionally, many patients in rural and underserved areas with chronic complex diseases such as HCV, substance use and mental health disorders face difficulties in accessing the specialty treatment they need. This special keynote presentation will detail the ECHO model which addresses this problem by giving physicians who specialize in treating complex and chronic conditions like HCV access to technology, enabling them to share knowledge about best practice protocols using a case-based learning approach to co-manage patients with primary caregivers in rural communities and prisons in New Mexico.
12:15 pm - 1:30 pm
Networking Lunch
1:30 pm- 2:30 pm
Concurrent Sessions (Choose from A or B)
A.
Robert C. Bowman, MD, A.T. Still University, Arizona
Primary Care vs. Child Development
Listen in on a debate of primary care versus child development related to quality, cost, and access. Dr. Bowman, one of the country's leading researchers on physician distribution, will provide a thorough account of this issue and how it impacts quality.
B.
Brock Slabach, MPH, FACHE NRHA Senior Vice President of Membership Services
Medical Students Billing 101
In medical school, most future doctors are never exposed to the billing and coding procedures that are an integral part of day-to-day life in any medical practice. This primer course gives medical students some exposure to the basics of billing and coding, including an overview of the Current Procedural Terminology (CPT) and the International Classification of Diseases, Ninth Edition (ICD-9), which will offer future rural doctors the basic knowledge necessary to oversee the submission of insurance claims and keep their practices financially viable.
2:30 pm - 3:30 pm
Concurrent Sessions (Choose from A or B)
A.
Esther Forti, PhD, RN, Consultant
Vicky J. Ott, MS., RD, Consultant
This session is sponsored by the Health Resources & Services Administration's Bureau of Primary Health Care.
Geriatric Nutrition Assessment Training for Primary Care Providers
Nutrition assessment is not a component of the routine health screening of the elderly, despite the important role that nutrition plays in the health status of the elderly population. The "DETERMINE Your Nutritional Health" tool consists of 10 items and is used in assessing geriatric nutrition. This tool was developed and distributed by the Nutrition Screening Initiative, a project of the American Academy of Family Physicians, American Dietetic Association, and the National Council on Aging. The presenters will conduct this special training on how to use and interpret the nutrition screening tool.
B.
Brock Slabach, MPH, FACHE Senior Vice President of Membership Services
Medical Students Billing 102
This course builds off of Medical Students Billing 101, offering medical students the opportunity to delve more deeply into the theory and procedures of health care payment and claims processing.
Activities for the afternoon
San Diego offers several walking tours, beautiful beach access, shopping, fine dining and exotic animals at the San Diego zoo.
http://www.wheretours.com/walking.htm
Thursday, July 17, 2008
8:00 am - 9:00 am
Breakfast/roundtables
9:00 am - 10:15 am
Patricia Kienle, Cardinal Health Foundation & Consultant for the American Society of Health System Pharmacists, Section of Inpatient Care Practitioners
The Pharmacist, a Vital Component to Medication Safety
This session will discuss the pharmacist's role in medication safety. Data will be shared on the impact that pharmacists can make, and case examples of innovative pharmacists' services.
10:30 am - 11:30 am
Maggie Elehwany, JD, NRHA VP Government Affairs & Policy
Tim Fry, NRHA Government Affairs & Policy Manager
Washington Update
The NRHA has set three major legislative priorities for 2008: 1) a Medicare package that is sensitive to the rural delivery system, 2) a spending bill that invests in the future of rural health, and 3) workforce solutions to the looming workforce crisis. Hear how these priorities are currently being addressed on Capitol Hill as well as the latest regulatory information surrounds quality and clinical related issues.
11:30 am - 12:00 pm
Paul Moore, DPh, NRHA President and Ray Christensen, MD, Chair, NRHA Clinical Constituency Group
Town Hall Meeting
During this session, the theme of the conference will be revisited and attendees can share in the discussion on the various topics that were covered. Learn from NRHA leaders what the NRHA Quality Initiative and the NRHA Clinical Constituency Group has to offer and how to take what you have learned and implement it in your community.
12:00 pm
Adjourn
***This opportunity is sponsored by the Health Resources & Services Administration's Federal Office of Rural Health Policy.
Continuing Education Credits will be sought from:
* The American Academy of Family Physicians
* The National Association for Healthcare Quality
* The California Board of Registered Nursing
