For more than a decade, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (RWJF) has sponsored a variety of hospital-based initiatives designed to improve the quality of care provided. These efforts have engaged staff members at all levels within a hospital to measure and improve the quality and safety of patient care, as well as help spread replicable strategies across the country.
Today, 281 teams at 192 forward-thinking hospitals are participating in RWJF's Aligning Forces for Quality (AF4Q) hospital quality improvement initiatives centered on four areas:
- Reducing readmissions
- Increasing emergency department throughput
- Improving language services
- Engaging nurses and frontline staff in quality improvement
Participating hospitals represent a range of institutions, from 25-bed critical care hospitals in Humboldt County, California, to 500+ bed urban teaching hospitals in Boston and elsewhere. This breadth of participants makes the lessons learned particularly valuable to others interested in improving the quality and equality of acute care.