Home > About Us > Leadership > President's Report Archive > July 2000
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Space utilization and acquisition of furniture is essentially complete. We have begun the process of reviewing long-term space options since our current sub-lease expires in June 2001. All vendor accounts initiated by United Hospital Fund (UHF) have been transferred, and local vendor accounts have been initiated, as needed. A NQF retirement benefits program has been established and will be effective on August 1, 2000. Annual and sick leave policies have been finalized. A conflict of interest policy (for both staff and Board/SFB members) should be finalized by the next Board meeting. Various insurance policies have been obtained (property and workers compensation) or renewed (professional liability).
As of July 1, 2000, 12 individuals were on board as either full-time staff or on-site part-time contractors. We expect to hire two more full-time staff before the end of the summer: one program director (SFB Coordinator/program officer) and one research analyst. Once Federal funds are finally in hand then we expect to recruit a membership/communications assistant, a program assistant and probably another program director or similar position.
An active membership recruitment effort is underway. If the pending slate of new members is approved at this meeting, then there will be 56 member organizations (up from 29 in May). Membership dues revenue is now at six months slightly ahead of the initial year-end projection.
An orientation meeting for NQF members and prospective members is scheduled for July 24-25 in Alexandria. Members will be briefed on NQF operations, given project updates and briefed about the SFB work. An agenda for Council elections and related matters will be developed.
The transfer of Robert Wood Johnson Foundation funds from UHF to NQF is complete. A $50,000 grant application to help support the annual meeting was submitted to AHRQ on May 1st, but we have not yet heard the outcome of that application. The Veterans Health Administration has provided $70,000 in core funding for a second year; those funds are in hand. A Health Services Research task order for $175,000 (via AHQR, HCFA and OPM) became available in May; these funds can be used to support a limited number of activities (e.g., Board, SFB and Member Orientation meeting expenses, procuring references from the literature, and the NQF newsletter). No corporate contributions have yet materialized, and the approach to this area is being rethought. The 1999 IRS and DC tax documents were filed in June.
We are still awaiting funds for the HCFA hospital performance measures project, as well as the two medical errors-related projects. We are advised not to expect these funds until September. (The unexpected delay in receiving these federal funds has required the timeline for these projects to be pushed back considerably.)
The funding priorities of some fifty foundations has been reviewed with the intent of targeting them for future projects.
Current Projects
The Hospital Performance Measures Project proposal was submitted to HCFA on April 26th; HCFA response is pending. Invitation letters for the Steering Committee were mailed in mid-June; a favorable response has been returned by almost everyone.
The two medical errors-related projects are on hold pending HCFA/AHRQ response and funding. NQF was explicitly asked not to submit a proposal for either of these projects; we are awaiting direction from the agencies. In an attempt to be ready to respond as quickly as possible, Steering Committee letters were mailed in mid-June, and most persons have responded favorably.
We have been advised that the technology transfer/IPRO project is running behind schedule. A NQF liaison has been established with IPRO.
Potential New Projects
Meetings have been held with many different organizations regarding potential areas of mutual interest and ways in which NQF could be helpful in endorsing or standardizing quality of care measures. At the moment, four areas look especially promising; these are: long term care, pain management, cancer and HIV disease/AIDS. Positive discussions have also been held with relevant organizations regarding measures for ischemic heart disease/cardiac disease and minority health quality of care.
The NQF is co-sponsoring with Kaiser Permanente and the Claremont Universities a second two-day roundtable to further explore the issues attendant to medical errors reporting. This meeting will be help on August 28-29, 2000, at the NASA/Ames facility in Mountain View, California.
I have given numerous keynote or featured speaker presentations on patient safety, healthcare errors and healthcare quality improvement. Among the groups or meetings addressed in the past couple months are the following: Partnership for Patient Safety National Symposium (Dallas) Christiana Care Health Services (Wilmington) Association for Health Services Research Annual Meeting (Los Angeles) National Health Foundation (Los Angeles) American College of Emergency Physicians Leadership Meeting (DC) American College of Physicians-American Society of Internal Medicine Association of Maryland Hospitals and Health Systems (Baltimore) Premier CEO Physician Leader Meeting (Reston) National Economic Summit on Hepatitis C (DC) Foundation for Veterans Health Care Annual Meeting (DC) Healthcare Business Media Roundtable on Patient Safety (DC) Greater New York Hospital Association (New York) VA National Consensus Conference (Las Vegas) Schering-Plough 4th Annual Health Care Leadership Conference Premier's Annual Member Meeting (Atlanta) AMA Clinical Quality Improvement Forum (Chicago) California Legislative Staff Forum (Sacramento) Gateway Purchasers for Health Conference (St. Louis) IPRO Annual Meeting (New York) Copies of feedback from some of these groups is attached.
Numerous newspaper, magazine and television interviews have been given, including a substantive section for a program on patient safety in Japan.
The inaugural issue of the NQF newsletter is at the printers and should be mailed to everyone in about three weeks.
The NQF Web site has been further enhanced to include a "Members Only" section that will feature advance posting of news items, agendas, policy statements and documents. Also added to the Members part of the site is a "Members Forum" through which members can provide comments about papers or statements that are posted at the site. We anticipate this feature will be a very useful and easy way for the Councils and workgroups to interact with each other.
A draft "Process for Consensus" has been developed and is currently under review by the NQF Board, the SFB, and convenors.