Vice Chair for Quality Improvement and Innovations

The Department of Medicine’s QII VCG took requests for applications for the FY22 Healthcare Innovations Grant earlier this year. Seven applications were received and their proposals were carefully rated by a panel of QII VCG members who represent multiple department sections. All applications were subsequently presented for consideration by a panel of leadership reviewers who represented BSLMC, MEDVAMC, BTH and Baylor Medicine. The award will provide $20,000 in funding for FY22 (July 1, 2021 through June 30, 2022). 

Dr. Prasad Manian, professor in the Section of Pulmonary, Critical Care and Sleep Medicine, was one of two awardees for his proposal, “Increase Compliance with Lung Cancer Screening in Baylor Clinic.” Dr. Dharani Narendra, assistant professor in the Section of Pulmonary, Critical Care and Sleep Medicine, was the second awardee for her proposal “Collaborative Care Using ICU Liberation Bundle to Improve Patient Outcomes and Reduce ICU Hospital-Acquired Infections during COVID Pandemic.”

The Department of Medicine’s QII VCG will be offering to Department of Medicine’s fellows an opportunity to participate in the FY21 cycle of the Quality Academy (QA). The goal is to provide fellows with a very thoughtfully developed curriculum in QI and to present them with an opportunity to actively practice in QI methods in real time, by engaging in tangible Quality and Safety projects within a team-based peer environment. This training helps round out the academic training of our fellows and positions them for better integration into a QI-based future as physicians. The QA time commitment is 1 hour every month from September 2020 to March 2021. Monthly training topics include:

• Introduction to QI
• Aim statement
• Data collection
• Data display
• Scholarship

The FY21 Quality Academy had many participants and the course ended with several innovative quality control projects and final presentations, held over two days. The first day's winner of the Best QA Presentation Award was the Gastroenterology and Hepatology team "Go Lightly," whose project was "Improving Helicobacter Pylori Eradication Rates at Ben Taub Hospital." The team's leader, Dr. Juan Gomez Cifuentes, said "The QI academy was a great resource to refresh QI concepts and to receive mentoring for ongoing projects; I enjoyed sharing QI experiences with fellows from other programs."

The second day's winner was the Pulmonary, Critical Care and Sleep Medicine team "PCCSM BLSMC," whose project was "Improving Hemoglobin A1c Acquisition Rates in Diabetic Endocrine Clinic Patients Within the Harris Health System." The team's leader, Dr. Katie Richards, said "The quality academy provided us with a solid background in quality improvement methodology which served the framework for our own project. It also gave us the opportunity and mentorship needed to conduct a meaningful QI project within our specialty.