Connecting Research and Patient Care: Lessons from the VA’s Quality Enhancement Research Initiative

Excerpt

The challenge of how to speed and sustain improvements in a complex health system continues to be a vexing one. It’s a challenge that has become even more urgent because of the current proposals for national health care reform. The success of that reform will depend in large part on whether we can learn how to transform our health care system into one that is more effective, reliable and efficient. The national meeting of the Quality Enhancement Research Initiative (QUERI) of the Department of Veterans Affairs, Veterans Health Administration (VA) in late 20081 offered a chance to reflect on what we have learned over a decade of studying and facilitating improvement for priority conditions within the VA. Although there are unique features to the VA due to the patients we serve and our integrated structure, many of the lessons are broadly applicable. …