Conference Overview
This two-day conference for Idaho healthcare professionals will feature presentations by nationally and internationally recognized experts on timely topics related to healthcare quality improvement and patient safety. Keynote addresses will be delivered by James Battles, PhD, AHRQ, Senior Service Fellow for Patient Safety and Dale Bratzler, DO, MPH, QIOSC Medical Director for the Oklahoma Foundation for Medical Quality. Plenary sessions will focus on quality measures in the context of patient safety, the evidence for pay-for-performance, community-based care coordination, and an evidence-based approach to improve teamwork and patient safety. Break-out sessions will be tailored to meet the needs of staff from physician offices, home health agencies, nursing homes, or hospitals.

This conference, sponsored jointly by Qualis Health, St. Alphonsus Regional Medical Center, and St. Luke’s Regional Medical Center, will provide attendees a valuable opportunity to network and share information with peers. A highlight of this event is the awards luncheon which will recognize selected organizations for outstanding efforts to improve the safety and quality of healthcare in Idaho during 2007.  

Conference Hotel
The conference will be held at the DoubleTree Hotel Boise Riverside. There are a limited number of rooms reserved at the conference rate of $99/night. To make reservations by phone, call 208-343-1871 and mention the conference to receive the same rate.  Reservations received after February 20, 2008, will be accepted on a space- and rate-available basis. Cancellations must be received by 4 p.m. on the day prior to arrival. The hotel is located just minutes from downtown Boise and provides easy access to major downtown attractions and restaurants. The hotel offers a variety of amenities, including free parking, on-site restaurant, complimentary fitness center, satellite TV, and high-speed Internet access. For those who may want information on other Boise hotels, please contact Qualis Health’s Chanda Neth at 800-488-1118 or chandan@qualishealth.org.

Featured Speakers
DALE BRATZLER, DO, MPH, currently serves as the Medical Director of the Hospital Interventions Quality Improvement Organization Support Center and the Hospital Quality of Care Measures Special Study located at the Oklahoma Foundation for Medical Quality. In these roles, he provides clinical and technical support for local and national hospital quality improvement initiatives. He is a Past President of the American Health Quality Association and currently serves on the National Advisory Council for the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality. Dr. Bratzler has published and presented locally and nationally on many occasions on topics related to healthcare quality, particularly related to improving care for pneumonia, increasing vaccination rates, and reducing surgical complications. Dr. Bratzler received his Doctor of Osteopathic Medicine degree at the University of Health Sciences College of Osteopathic Medicine in Kansas City, Missouri, and his Master of Public Health degree from the University of Oklahoma Health Sciences Center College of Public Health. He is board certified in internal medicine. Dr. Bratzler is an adjunct associate professor of health administration and policy at the University of Oklahoma College of Public Health.  

BARTON HILL, MD is the Vice President for Medical Affairs at St. Luke’s Boise & Meridian Medical Centers. He is a Board Certified Emergency Medicine physician and has a Masters Degree in Public Administration from Western Michigan University. He has been with St. Luke’s since 1993, as a practicing Emergency physician, in medical leadership roles including Department Chair, Medical Director, Chair of the Performance Improvement Council, and as members of the Board of Director and Foundation Board. As the VPMA, Dr. Hill is responsible for performance improvement, medical staff relationships, credentialing, case management and patient care quality. He is passionate about leadership development and being an agent of change. Dr. Hill is married with three children. He loves to hunt, fish recreate in the outdoors, and raise Labrador Retrievers.

JAMES B. BATTLES, PhD is a native of Ohio where he did his undergraduate education at Miami University and received his doctorate in medical education from the Ohio State University. In November 2000, Dr. Battles joined the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) in Rockville, Maryland as Senior Service Fellow for Patient Safety where he is senior content specialist in patient safety for AHRQ’s patient safety initiative. He manages numerous patient safety grants and contracts in the area of event reporting, risk assessment, and team training. He is an internationally recognized expert in the area of patient safety having authored numerous articles and book chapters in the past several years. Prior to coming to AHRQ he was Professor of Medical Education at The University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center at Dallas where he was co-principal investigator for the Medical Event Reporting System for Transfusion Medicine (MERS-TM) funded by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) which has served as a prototype for a national system of reporting near miss events in health care. In addition to his patient safety research, he is an internationally recognized medical educator for his work Problem Based Learning (PBL), the use of Standardized Patients for teaching and evaluation, and the Objective Structured Clinical Evaluation (OSCE) and faculty and curriculum development. Dr. Battles was director and principal investigator for a federally funded (HRSA) fellowship and faculty development program for new primary care faculty in general internal medicine and family medicine. He was also actively involved in other primary care residency and pre-doctoral programs at UT Southwestern. Prior to going to Texas, Dr. Battles served as Director of the Ohio Regional Medical Audiovisual Consortium (ORMAC), an educational cooperative of the seven medical schools in Ohio. He was also principal investigator of a NCI funded program, the Regional Ambulatory Chemotherapy Project designed to introduce modern chemotherapy treatment protocols to community hospitals in Ohio. Dr. Battles is a retired Navy Captain specializing in surface warfare, strategic planning and systems design. Dr. Battles is married to the former Carolyn St. John Elliott who is director of Nursing Education and Quality and Providence Hospital in Washington, D.C. They have two sons James Elliott who is an MBA student at Texas A&M University and Timothy Keith who is a LT in the US Navy serving on board the USS Mitscher DD 57 in Norfolk, Virginia.

JANE BROCK, MD, MSPH, is the chief medical officer for the Colorado Foundation for Medical Care (CFMC), the Medicare Quality Improvement Organization (QIO) for Colorado. She spent 18 years in primary care practice at the Boulder Medical Center, and continues to provide occupational medical services in a Lexmark printer manufacturing facility. Brock received her M.D. from the University of Kansas, her MSPH and Preventive Medicine training from the University of Colorado, and a bronze-level Lean Certification from the Society of Manufacturing Engineers. Her work focuses in three main areas: applying principles of occupational medicine to physician work in outpatient settings, developing cross-setting standard operating procedures to implement coordination of care best practices, and using quality improvement techniques to reduce harmful over utilization of medical services. She is currently leading the Transitions of Care and the VALUE pilot projects funded by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services.

Preliminary Agenda

Poster Presentation
Conference attendees are encouraged to bring poster presentations to share information on their quality improvement efforts. To reserve poster space, please check the appropriate box on the registration form. For more information, contact Teresa Hamlin at 208-389-5049 or teresah@qualishealth.org.

Continuing Education Credits
CEUs and CMEs have been requested.