The Volume and Cost of Quality Metric Reporting.

Importance: US hospitals report data on many health care quality metrics to government and independent health care rating organizations, but the annual cost to acute care hospitals of measuring and reporting quality metric data, independent of resources spent on quality interventions, is not well known.

Objective: To evaluate externally reported inpatient quality metrics for adult patients and estimate the cost of data collection and reporting, independent of quality-improvement efforts.

Design, Setting, And Participants: Retrospective time-driven activity-based costing study at the Johns Hopkins Hospital (Baltimore, Maryland) with hospital personnel involved in quality metric reporting processes interviewed between January 1, 2019, and June 30, 2019, about quality reporting activities in the 2018 calendar year.

Approaches to Measuring Trends in Interdisciplinary Research Publications at One Academic Medical Center.

Purpose: To determine if interdisciplinary research has increased between 2005 and 2015, based on an analysis of journal articles containing at least 1 author from Johns Hopkins University, and to compare different methods for determining the disciplinarity of research articles.

Method: In 2017-2018, 100 peer-reviewed biomedical science articles were randomly selected from years 2005, 2010, and 2015 and classified as unidisciplinary or interdisciplinary based on Scopus author affiliation data (method 1). The corresponding authors of the 2010 and 2015 articles were sent a survey asking them to describe the disciplines involved in their research (method 2) and to define their research as unidisciplinary or interdisciplinary based on provided definitions (method 3).

The Baltimore Community-Based Organizations Neighborhood Network: Enhancing Capacity Together (CONNECT) Cluster RCT.

Introduction: This cluster RCT aimed to reduce healthcare utilization and increase the referral of patients between an academic health center and local community-based organizations (CBOs) that address social determinants of health.

Study Design: Cluster RCT.

Settings/participants: Twenty-two CBOs located in Baltimore, Maryland, were randomly assigned to the intervention or control group, and 5,255 patients were allocated to the intervention or control group based on whether they lived closer to an intervention or control CBO.

Baltimore CONNECT: A Randomized Trial to Build Partnership Between Community Organizations and a Local Health System.

Background: Community-based organizations (CBOs) are key partners in supporting care, but health systems and CBOs operate in silos. Baltimore Community-based Organizations Neighborhood Network: Enhancing Capacity Together (CONNECT) was a randomized, controlled trial based on the core tenets of the World Health Organization's (WHO) African Partnerships for Patient Safety Community Engagement (ACE) approach.

Objectives: We describe a research protocol and lessons learned from a partnership between Johns Hopkins Health System and 11 CBOs.

Grappling With Complex Food Systems to Reduce Obesity: A US Public Health Challenge.

Despite 2 decades of effort by the public health community to combat obesity, obesity rates in the United States continue to rise. This lack of progress raises fundamental questions about the adequacy of our current approaches. Although the causes of population-wide obesity are multifactorial, attention to food systems as potential drivers of obesity has been prominent.

From Kisiizi to Baltimore: cultivating knowledge brokers to support global innovation for community engagement in healthcare.

Background: Reverse Innovation has been endorsed as a vehicle for promoting bidirectional learning and information flow between low- and middle-income countries and high-income countries, with the aim of tackling common unmet needs. One such need, which traverses international boundaries, is the development of strategies to initiate and sustain community engagement in health care delivery systems.

Objective: In this commentary, we discuss the Baltimore "Community-based Organizations Neighborhood Network: Enhancing Capacity Together" Study.

How Co-Developed Are Community and Academic Partnerships?

Background: The world-renowned resources of Johns Hopkins Hospital (JHH) in Baltimore, Maryland, stand in marked contrast with the surrounding impoverished neighborhoods. Community-based organizations (CBOs) are critical frontline responders to residents' needs. Baltimore CONNECT, an academic-community partnership, co-developed an intervention to strengthen connections between CBOs and between CBOs and the health care system.

A Concise Tool for Measuring Care Coordination from the Provider's Perspective in the Hospital Setting.

Background: To support hospital efforts to improve coordination of care, a tool is needed to evaluate care coordination from the perspective of inpatient healthcare professionals.

Objectives: To develop a concise tool for assessing care coordination in hospital units from the perspective of healthcare professionals, and to assess the performance of the tool in measuring dimensions of care coordination in 2 hospitals after implementation of a care coordination initiative.

Methods: We developed a survey consisting of 12 specific items and 1 global item to measure provider perceptions of care coordination across a variety of domains, including teamwork and communication, handoffs, transitions, and patient engagement.

Hospital Characteristics and the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality Inpatient Quality Indicators: A Systematic Review.

Background: The Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality Inpatient Quality Indicators (IQIs) include inpatient mortality for selected procedures and medical conditions. They have assumed an increasingly prominent role in hospital comparisons. Healthcare delivery and policy-related decisions need to be driven by reliable research that shows associations between hospital characteristics and quality of inpatient care delivered.

Home-based primary care practices in the United States: current state and quality improvement approaches.

Objectives: To describe the characteristics of home-based primary care practices: staffing, administrative, population served, care practices, and quality of care challenges.

Design: Survey of home-based primary care practices.

Setting: Home-based primary care practices in the United States.

Transfusion medicine in American undergraduate medical education.

Background: Blood transfusion is the most common procedure performed in American hospitals, and transfusions are commonly ordered by physicians without formal training in transfusion medicine. Several transfusion medicine curricula have been proposed, including those developed through the Transfusion Medicine Academic Awards (TMAA). To our knowledge, no comprehensive study has assessed how transfusion medicine is incorporated into undergraduate medical education.

Faculty involvement in translational research and interdisciplinary collaboration at a US academic medical center.

Background: Forty-six academic health centers have been awarded Clinical and Translational Science Awards by the National Institutes of Health to enhance health by advancing translational research.

Objective: As a recipient of a Clinical and Translational Science Award, we aimed to determine the prevalence of translational and interdisciplinary collaboration at our institution.

Design, Setting, And Participants: We surveyed all full-time faculty and postdoctoral fellows (n = 3870) in the Johns Hopkins Schools of Medicine, Public Health, Nursing and Engineering, in late 2008.

Evaluating online continuing medical education seminars: evidence for improving clinical practices.

The purpose of this study was to evaluate the potential for online continuing medical education (CME) seminars to improve quality of care. Primary care physicians (113) participated in a randomized controlled trial to evaluate an online CME series. Physicians were randomized to view either a seminar about type 2 diabetes or a seminar about systolic heart failure.

Impact of chronic conditions on quality of life in patients with inflammatory bowel disease.

Background: Although studies suggest that inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) has a significant impact on an individual's health-related quality of life, the added weight of other health conditions and comorbidities has not been investigated. The purpose of this study was to expand on prior research by taking into account the impact of other chronic health conditions on the health-related quality of life of individuals with IBD, and to develop a model to help clinicians understand the relative impact of various predictors of their patients' physical and mental health-related quality of life.

Methods: 615 patients from the gastroenterology outpatient practice of a large, urban university hospital received a self-administered survey including questions about their health conditions, the severity of their bowel symptoms, and their health-related quality of life (measured using the SF-36 instrument).

The NJ SEED project: evaluation of an innovative initiative for ethics training in nursing homes.

Objectives: This article reports the results of an evaluation of the New Jersey Stein Ethics Education and Development (NJ SEED) project--a statewide initiative to create, organize and educate a statewide network of regional long-term care ethics committees. The main focus of the evaluation was to measure utilization of the committees, describe how facilities have benefited from the project, and identify potential barriers to the use of this resource.

Methods: Based on administrative records from the NJ SEED project, 225 facilities were identified and asked to complete a facility survey.