: The goal of the collaborative planning effort described in this application is to create a detailed plan for the implementation and support of informatics tools in regional health centers designed to improve the safety of surgical patient care. The resulting plan will include the creation of informatics tools for the management of institutional surgical care information, creation of a multi-institutional partnership to manage both the informatics and surgical quality improvement programs, and the development of an economic model related to the business and safety benefits. This work will be completed through a partnership of diverse regional medical centers in the middle Tennessee region, including Vanderbilt University Medical Center, Meharry Medical College, the St. Thomas Health System, and Gateway Medical Center. The goal of the Consortium is to create, deploy, and support perioperative informatics tools designed to empower transinstitutional care improvement efforts for surgical patients. The products will be: 1) a surgical safety alert system with access to a registry of surgical health risks for the region's patients, 2) a preoperative evaluation resource containing the medical history relevant to planning perioperative care, 3) the creation of a perioperative database core to support health services research initiatives, 4) a perioperative benchmarking resource to support collaborative quality improvement efforts, and 5) implementation of point-of-care prompts to reduce errors in the patient care process. This application is leveraged on the unique informatics infrastructure developed at VUMC over the past 10 years that has delivered perioperative software solutions characterized by high user adoption and resiliency. Extensive experience in institutional change management will be applied to ensure a successful planning process. Similarly, previous successes in improving the quality and safety of surgical patient care with informatics tools will be used to ensure the ability to implement the developed tools and achieve the desired impact on the quality and safety of patient care.
