New Online Community Aims to Improve New York Health Care Quality

New Online Community Aims to Improve New York Health Care Quality

1,000 Health Professionals Share Best Practices Through IPRO's Joint Effort New York

LAKE SUCCESS, N.Y., Feb. 1 /PRNewswire/ -- "A one-stop tool" is how Lenore Paterno, Director of Cardiac Rehabilitation Services at St. John's Riverside Hospital, Yonkers describes Joint Effort New York (JENY). A new online forum that encourages open sharing of best practices in order to stimulate health care quality improvement in New York State, JENY is administered by IPRO, New York's quality improvement organization. Although it just started in August, the innovative site (http://jeny.ipro.org/) has nearly 1,000 users from throughout the state's health care community. More than half of the state's hospitals already participate.

"We are thrilled that so many of our state's health care providers are tapping into this useful site and sharing information on what works and what doesn't," says Theodore O. Will, Chief Executive Officer, IPRO. "This is a great use of the power of the Internet and we believe it will encourage not just the sharing of information, but collaboration and quality improvement."

The site includes a range of interactive areas that users can participate in.

* The Main Conference Hall houses the general work and knowledge of the
community. Features include an information booth and help desk,
conference call schedule, archives and general discussion area on
quality improvement.
* Breakout Rooms go in-depth on specific topics as part of structured
collaboratives run by IPRO. These include such topics as cardiac care,
smoking cessation, infectious disease and nursing home and home health
quality.
* Cafe Melior provides a less formal way for community members to share
ideas, chat off-topic and get to know one another.
* The site also includes a Member List, Calendar and FAQ.



Both Paterno and Karen Ames, BSHS, Director of Performance Improvement at Syracuse's St. Joseph's Hospital Health Center, are mentors in IPRO's smoking cessation collaborative. Participating in the online version of the collaborative is great, Ames says, because it "allows everyone to share information and reach their goals more quickly." As mentors, Ames and Paterno, who lead smoking cessation initiatives at their respective institutions, post reports of their hospital's cessation activities. The sharing of these reports is invaluable, Paterno says, and this information as well as online interaction and regular IPRO conference calls have helped a number of hospitals in New York get new smoking cessation programs off the ground.

"We surveyed our collaborators in previous online efforts and realized that there was a broad audience in the state's health care community that could benefit from discussions in an open online forum and wanted to share information," says Clare B. Bradley MD, MPH, Chief Medical Officer, IPRO. "They have responded enthusiastically and we expect to soon have well over 1,000 community members."

JENY is a new way of communicating within the health care community, but Internet forums have been used extensively in other settings. Online communities range from discussion forums and chat rooms around common areas of interest hosted by Internet service providers and others, to those run by professional and trade associations. According to the Pew Internet & American Life Project, more than 90 million Americans have participated in online groups.

"We have already modified JENY based on community members' initial experiences," says Spencer Vibbert, IPRO's Vice President for Communications and Corporate Development. "For example, we found people working across areas such as heart failure and acute myocardial infarction wanted to share with one another, so we created a single Cardiac breakout room. We will keep measuring the reaction of the community as new tools are developed and modify them accordingly."

With 20 years of experience in health care quality improvement and evaluation, IPRO holds major contracts with state and federal governments to review the cost and quality of services provided to Medicaid recipients, Medicare beneficiaries, and patients enrolled in managed care organizations, and to work with the health care community to improve those services. Based in Lake Success, New York, IPRO also holds contracts with private-sector clients to improve the quality of privately financed services.

For more information or to participate in the JENY community, please visit http://jeny.ipro.org/.


Source: IPRO

CONTACT: Dennis Tartaglia, Whitney Wasserman, or Lauren Sabados,
+1-212-481-7000, or Spencer Vibbert, +1-516-326-7767, ext. 652, all for IPRO

Web site: http://jeny.ipro.org/


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