In June 2011, our DOM hosted the 1st annual Quality and Safety Symposium to celebrate all of the great projects that were submitted to the Quality & Safety Innovation Challenge (QSIC), acknowledge the award winners, and appreciate the wide efforts to improve patient care across our DOM clinical sites. Finalists in the QSIC also had an opportunity to present their projects to the symposium attendees. The event provided a chance to highlight the importance of QI/PS work, the tremendous engagement of trainees in those efforts, and create another venue for QI/PS enthusiasts across our DOM.

The rating criteria for the QSIC award-winning projects were:

1. The magnitude of the problem or quality/safety gap in care
2. How well the project is aligned with one of the thematic focus areas
3. The nature and scope of the innovation
4. Generalizability
• Utilizing improvement processes that could be applicable to other services and practices within DOM, our respective hospitals, and/or other organizations
5. Thoroughness of project evaluation
6. Potential sustainability of results

A specially formed QSIC rating committee comprised of faculty and trainees awarded 3 finalists (click on the links to see project details):

1. "Empowering Hospitalized Patients with Limited English Proficiency to Self-Advocate for Professional Interpreter Services" (PDF)
   
   

   Steve Popper shares the lessons learned from their efforts to improve interpreter services

2. "Keep Me in the Loop! Increasing Communication Between Internal Medicine Residents and Primary Care Providers to Admitted Patients at San Francisco General Hospital" (PDF)
   

   Mia Lozada discusses efforts to improve communication between the inpatient and outpatient settings

3. "Transition of Care from Acute Hospitalization to the Patient Centered Medical Home: An Electronic Handoff" (PDF)
   

   Nick Moy presents an electronic handoff tool developed at our SFVA medical center

Additional Photos from the Quality & Safety Symposium

Niraj Sehgal and Talmadge King express their appreciation to all of the QSIC participants for their commitment to improving patient care