WCHQ News Releases

Wisconsin Collaborative for Healthcare Quality recognized for innovative, effective approaches to build trust, improve health care

The Wisconsin Collaborative for Healthcare Quality (WCHQ) was one of eight organizations recognized by the American Board of Internal Medicine Foundation (ABIM)

Foundation’s Trust Practice Challenge. The ABIM Foundation, a nonprofit organization dedicated to strengthening medical professionalism, honored WCHQ for their substantial contributions to building trust, which the Foundation considers the backbone of patient, physician and health care system relationships.

ABIM Foundation’s Trust Practice Challenge highlights best practices that build and promote trust in a variety of health care settings, contexts and relationships, and encourage dialogue about implementation. WCHQ was selected based on its success in creating a data-sharing consortium of health systems, hospitals and medical clinics that collect and publicly report clinical data to improve performance.

In its application, WCHQ noted: “Given the breadth of our membership, WCHQ has a major influence in Wisconsin on establishing the priorities for ambulatory performance measurement and defining the nomenclature and framework for quality improvement/practice transformation. WCHQ’s membership is comprised of all the health systems and a majority of the hospitals and medical clinics. In Wisconsin, public reporting is an expectation across this state. Indeed, public reporting is no longer a debate in Wisconsin, it is a core part of the process to provide exceptional quality health care.”

“The work of these leaders inspires all of us in health care to examine where trust has been lost and explore ways to restore it,” said Richard J. Baron, MD, president/CEO of the ABIM Foundation. “Acknowledging gaps in trust and working to create trust among the players in our health care system will ultimately improve health care.”

In addition to WCHQ, the following organizations were recognized:

• Duke University Department of Medicine – Built greater understanding through a listening booth and podcast to facilitate conversations among clinicians, medical students, residents, staff and patients.
• Hawaii Pacific Health – Developed an open nomination process to identify practices and processes that should be eliminated or modified in its EHR system.
• Johns Hopkins School of Medicine – Developed a Colleges Advisory Program to model positive mentoring relationships between students and faculty.
• Mayo Clinic, Institute for Healthcare Improvement – Created a Leader Index to evaluate five key leader behaviors among clinical staff that affect performance.
• Oregon Health & Science University – Built trust across teams through a learning collaborative focused on a relational approach to leadership.
• UnityPoint Health – Created a dedicated clinic program focused on primary care and special health care needs of the LGBTQ community.
• University of Chicago School of Medicine – Used a graphic medicine comic strip to foster better patient-physician interaction involving electronic health records.

To learn more about the ABIM Foundation and the Trust Practice Challenge, visit https://abimfoundation.org/what-we-do/initiatives/trust-practice-challenge

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