NC Physician Institute for Quality Enhancement Program
The North Carolina Physician Institute for Quality Enhancement Program is funded by a $100,000 grant from the Blue Cross and Blue Shield of North Carolina Foundation. The mission of the North Carolina Physician Institute for Quality Enhancement Program (NCPIQE) is to establish infrastructure and resources to support Quality Improvement in the processes by which specialty medical care is delivered in North Carolina. It has done this by working with physicians to participate in care registries, identify opportunities for improvement from these registries and other appropriate data sources, develop physician quality improvement fellows through a structured training program and implement process improvements using the QI fellows in their hospital. Program staff work closely with the NC Center for Hospital Quality and Patient Safety (www.ncqualitycenter.org) to align goals and training activities. NCPIQE understands that there are many legitimate constituencies within Health Care and will work to develop partnerships with other organizations as appropriate to support its mission. The ultimate goal: Demonstrate physicians involvement to achieve quality improvement.
Three fellows, James Hooten, MD, Leo Spector, MD and Peter Gilmer, MD, have been working in the program and all three have been committed to the curriculum. The adoption of best practices is the theme of all three fellows’ projects. While best practices are important components of performance improvement, the challenge moving forward is to have the fellows understand how to use QI principles to identify the root causes for system failures and identify and implement appropriate solutions. Click on each fellow’s name to learn more about their quality project and progress of their work so far.
