The Advancing Excellence (AE) in America's Nursing Homes Campaign1, a national long term care quality improvement partnership (QIP), composed of providers, health care professionals, consumers and advocates, and government agencies and regulators, is conducting a second national conference to provide coalition building experiences, training, and educational materials to QI professionals who are members of Local Area Networks for Excellence (LANE) engaged in state level QIPs in 49 states. Sessions will be presented on how to use a continuous quality improvement (CQI) framework for implementing evidence-based interventions for four clinical goals (short stay and long stay reduction in pain, restraint reduction and pressure ulcer prevention) and four organizational goals (reducing staff turnover, increasing consistent assignment, setting quality improvement targets, and measuring resident and/or family satisfaction). Sessions will provide opportunities for coalition building within the LANE team, as well as, opportunities to interact with other LANEs from across the country to learn about successful approaches that can be used to implement CQI. AAHSA, on behalf of AE Campaign and as member of Steering Committee, is requesting AHRQ to partially fund (cosponsor) this conference. This conference approach is directly related to AHRQ's Small Grant Program for Conference Support objective #3 (dissemination ) and objective #4 (training and infrastructure development for translating research into practice). To disseminate conference materials beyond conference participants, PowerPoint slides, handouts and other educational materials presented during the conference that can be used by 49 LANEs and 6,600 nursing homes participating in the Campaign to implement CQI for the eight goals will be posted on the Campaign's website (www.nhqualitycampaign.org) and will be disseminated by 28 Campaign Steering Committee member organizations. Non-participating nursing homes will be able to access the materials on the Campaign website. The conference planning committee has selected the first week of December 2008 to hold the conference in a city that is easily accessible for participants from all states. A meeting planner to be selected by May 1, 2008 will handle these logistics. ? ? ?
The Advancing Excellence Campaign is a national effort to improve the quality of care and life for residents in our nation's nursing homes. The Campaign is voluntary and is supported by over 30 national organizations that include provider associations, advocacy and consumer groups, CMS and other government agencies, foundations and practitioner organizations. This project is to support a national conference to further the goals of the Campaign.
