For Immediate Release

2008 Quality Institute for Healthcare Explores Partnership Between Systems Engineering And Care Delivery

Milwaukee, Wis., January 21, 2008 — Examining how the U.S. healthcare system can embrace systems engineering to deliver safer, more effective patient-centered care is the theme of the 2008 Quality Institute for Healthcare (QIHC) hosted by the American Society for Quality (ASQ), the leading quality improvement organization in the United States. This year’s conference will take place May 5-7, 2008, at the George R. Brown Convention Center in Houston, Texas.

The Quality Institute for Healthcare welcomes all healthcare leaders and quality practitioners— from administrators and managers to clinical directors—who are interested in developing the quality improvement skills and knowledge needed to successfully manage a complex healthcare environment. The three-day event will showcase advances in the use of systems engineering tools and methods with hands-on workshops with ‘take it home and try it’ applications and results-driven case presentations. The goal is to help clinicians deliver care that is safer, more efficient, timely and accessible to more people.

QIHC will be held concurrently with ASQ’s annual World Conference on Quality and Improvement and attendees are invited enjoy high-profile keynote speakers from that conference including:

• Apollo 13 Astronaut Rear Adm.T.K. “Ken” Mattingly (USN, Ret.), who will share his experience of teamwork, leadership and personal achievement as part of NASA’s ground crew efforts to save the astronauts of Apollo 13.
• Bayer Corporation MaterialScience’s president and CEO Gregory S. Babe, who will discuss his work directing corporate quality initiatives for this major consumer health brand.

Healthcare quality leaders and experts from around the country will direct daily hands-on workshops on the latest healthcare quality improvement methods. Some of the workshop topics include:

• Lean Approaches for Sustained Systems Redesign – presented by Heather Woodward-Hagg, College of Technology at Purdue University, West Lafayette, Ind.
• Improving Patient Flow – Robert Sutter and Jonathan Flanders of Juran Institute
• Analyzing Failure and Risk in Healthcare – Keith Poole and Brian Hudson of St. Francis Healthcare, Muncie, Ind.
• Five Tools You Can Use Tomorrow To Improve Healthcare – presented by Anantha Kollengode and Muhanad Hirzallah of Mayo Clinic, Rochester, Minn.
• Real Life Issues in Modeling Health Care Capacity – presented by Jason H. Goto, AnalysisWorks Inc., Vancouver, BC.

Participants attending this year’s Institute will also have access to other select sessions and other activities of the ASQ World Conference on Quality and Improvement. To learn more and to register for the Quality Institute for Healthcare, please visit http://qihc.asq.org.

 

The American Society for Quality, www.asq.org, has been the world’s leading authority on quality for more than 60 years. With more than 93,000 individual and organizational members, the professional association advances learning, quality improvement and knowledge exchange to improve business results, and to create better workplaces and communities worldwide. As champion of the quality movement, ASQ offers technologies, concepts, tools and training to quality professionals, quality practitioners and everyday consumers, encouraging all to Make Good Great®. ASQ has been the sole administrator of the prestigious Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award since 1991. Headquartered in Milwaukee, Wis., ASQ is a founding partner of the American Customer Satisfaction Index (ACSI), a prominent quarterly economic indicator, and also produces the Quarterly Quality Report.