Seattle – The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS), a department of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, awarded Qualis Health a major new contract to implement a national Internet-based learning management system (LMS) across the CMS national network of Quality Improvement Organizations (QIOs).

QIOs such as Qualis Health are CMS contractors responsible for transforming the quality of medical care in which every person gets the right care every time and where care is safe, effective, patient-centered, timely, efficient, and equitable.

A national LMS will accelerate learning and efficiently share knowledge among healthcare providers nationwide. Qualis Health, through its Performance Improvement Quality Improvement Support Center (PI QIOSC), offers QIOs the opportunity to take advantage of services proven to rapidly and efficiently result in successful outcomes for healthcare quality improvement. The QIOSC will implement the pilot study to identify efficiencies, assess increased cost-savings and evaluate measurable improvements in healthcare quality.

“A national learning management system will dramatically step up the quality improvement community’s ability to collaborate, share knowledge and promote a level of spread never before achieved,” said Donna

Daniel, PhD, director of the Performance Improvement QIOSC at Qualis Health. “As the Performance Improvement QIOSC for CMS, our mission is to assist the QIO community achieve results in the 8th Scope of Work by adopting systems that improve processes and promote efficiencies.”

Internet-based LMSs will integrate the vision of CMS to achieve transformational change over the next three years. The promise of “distance learning” inherent in the system allows healthcare organizations to aggregate and efficiently share innovations and promote widespread implementation of ‘best practices’ in patient safety across healthcare settings. Through the use of its peer rooms and collaboration tools, QIOs will have greater interaction and engagement with healthcare providers – regardless of geography, scheduling conflicts and other barriers.

To implement the system, Qualis Health’s Performance Improvement QIOSC will subcontract with Meridian Knowledge Solutions, Inc., a leading provider of eLearning and knowledge management products, to train and certify approximately 3,500 QIO programs and End Stage Renal Disease (ESRD) network staff on computer security and procedures.

The pilot program, which concludes on Oct. 31, 2005, will consist of three phases. Phase one will call for the QIOSC to assess and measure adoption rates of the LMS. In phase two, the QIOSC will administer LMS training and security recertification for ESRD networks and QIOs. Phase three will require that the group establish criteria for content development and generate RFPs for content contractors.

After implementation, the Performance Improvement QIOSC will also serve as an information resource for the community of ESRD networks and QIOs using the system. The QIOSC will answer questions and provide guidance around these areas:

• Use and integration of existing training material
• Options for training formats
• Training tools and resources for developing learning modules