December 15, 2006

Improving care through High Performance Medicine

Several years ago, Partners HealthCare launched the Signature Initiatives to improve quality, safety and efficiency at its member institutions. Now known as High Performance Medicine, these initiatives aim to address widely recognized problems in health care and ensure that Partners remains a leader in patient care by improving in five areas: maximizing the use of new information technology, increasing patient safety and reducing medical errors, making high quality uniform across the Partners system, coordinating care for patients with high-cost diseases, and improving efficiency in the use of medications and radiology.

Through High Performance Medicine, Partners institutions already have begun a number of quality and safety improvement measures, including the adoption of electronic medical records, computerized ordering of drugs and tests, patient tracking systems, and disease management and nurse coaching programs for the sickest patients.

As Partners moves forward in implementing High Performance Medicine across the system, the MGH is committed to educating employees about these initiatives. The hospital recently debuted a series of educational posters for employees, and all Partners computers now feature a new screensaver to highlight the goals and successes of the program. During the past several months, a number of Partners ads have run in the Boston Globe to educate the public about the High Performance Medicine efforts.

For general information about High Performance Medicine, visit www.partners.org. For additional information, view a special issue of the Partners Rounds newsletter dedicated to High Performance Medicine at clinicalaffairs.partners.org/content/10-06_Partners%20Rounds.pdf.