There is a “secret sauce” that makes healthcare better. It can be applied liberally, at very little cost, and it always makes a difference. That “secret sauce” is collaboration.
Quality Quest for Health is a health improvement collaborative. It is our mission to make healthcare better in Illinois. We do that by bringing everyone together, working on tough problems and coming up with solutions that deliver big wins.
Our region is the only one in the country in which people can look online and see their doctor’s results before deciding to schedule a colonoscopy. Doctors in this community collaborated to set standards they all agreed on, and they courageously agreed to report their results—something no one else in the country is doing.
Over 200 people in central Illinois collaborated to make our region the first in the state to implement a truly modern healthcare communication system that securely links a patient’s healthcare records together. Central Illinois Health Information Exchange offers allcharts™ connectivity to clinics, health departments, hospitals and others at a very affordable cost. The technology isn’t new—it’s the same technology that sites like Travelocity use to make travel planning easier.
Quality Quest’s Healthy Babies Healthy Moms collaboration is bringing people together to make maternity care safer and less expensive. The goal is to eliminate the now common practice of delivering babies before they are ready without a medical reason. The reader may have heard the aphorism, “Every system is designed to get the results that it gets. If you want different results, change the system.” Maternity care is impacted by payment policy, government policy, hospital policy, clinical knowledge and performance knowledge. No one and nobody can change everything, yet these all need to change to keep babies safe and make maternity care more affordable. We must collaborate to realize these goals.
Quality Quest is the neutral forum where collaboration happens. We have no non-disclosure agreements, trade secrets or patents. We bring the “secret sauce” that has been missing. Quality Quest exists because local leaders such as Jim Moore said, “We can do better.” To learn more, visit qualityquest.org. iBi
