The Surveys on Patient Safety Culture™ (SOPS®) take your hospital’s pulse. The results help answer questions like:  Are staff focused on patient safety?  What are our safety results and where can we improve?  How do we take our scores and use them to transform patient outcomes?  How do we build staff confidence?  How do we stress the importance of patient safety?  When used strategically, the required SOPS® survey data can reveal important insights — that go beyond maintaining The Joint Commission accreditation. The Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality offers data collection as a part of the SOPS® survey. Though you’re spending the resources and time to complete this requirement, this effort alone doesn’t improve patient safety. You need to know which safety initiatives to target, followed by the outcomes and impact. A deep dive into the data can deliver that.  In this blog, we'll examine five important factors that impact patient safety data and initiatives, including surve

The National Committee for Quality Assurance defines a patient-centered medical home (PCMH) as “a model of care that puts patients at the forefront.” The PCMH highlights the importance of care coordination and provides pathways to ensure that the medical neighborhood is tangible to the patients served.   The tenants of the medical home ask care teams to treat patients for their medical, behavioral and address their social and economic needs to achieve desired outcomes. As one of the 6 concept areas of the PCMH, it is imperative to implement policies, workflows and partnerships that will promote relationships outside of the primary care setting.   Medical homes are not just care settings but care connectors. Read on to learn:  how to sustain the medical home through effective care coordination;  why practices shouldn’t exclude community-based organizations; and  the key technical components for an effective, sustainable PCMH care coordination model.  Sustaining your medical home through