Quality Management & Patient Safety

Director:   Evan Benjamin, M. D.

Duration:   4 weeks
Students per month:   1

Quality of care and patient safety has opened the forefront of our healthcare system.  Defining healthcare quality and improving the safety of healthcare are the key elements of this elective.  The core issue becomes not only eliminating ineffective use of health care resources but also designing strategies to inculcate optimal clinical practices at the bedside.  Key concepts employed in this elective are practiced guideline development, caveats of clinical pathways, decision analysis continuous quality improvement (CQI) and computers to assist decision making.  The course will demonstrate the common ground that is shared by quality improvement, utilization review, and risk management.  Cost-effective analytic techniques to drive biotechnology assessment will be discussed as well.

The student will participate in daily utilization management decisions; gain an understanding of the roles of public policy and health industry regulation; and help to design practice guidelines to be used for a large health care system.

Research projects will be discussed which focus on the type of information needed to guide better decision making by physicians.  In this framework, outcomes initiatives will be put into perspective for emerging integrated delivery systems.  This elective is intended to give the student an appreciation for how healthcare quality is defined and for the practical application of evidence-based medicine. 

No nights or weekends during this rotation.