ACNs, process improvement and revamping the clinical librarian program

This is a summary of a presentation from the recent Medical Library Association annual conference in Toronto from Andrea Ball, Care Management and Population Health Librarian at the University of Washington Health Sciences Library The Affordable Care Act has brought many changes to healthcare. This transformation is moving at a fast pace and librarians are trying to keep up. The University of Washington has established itself as an Accountable Care Network (ACN) striving towards the Triple Aim of improved health, increased patient satisfaction and reduced costs. As such, a new clinical librarian position was created with the title of Care Management and Population Health librarian. This position supports the organization in its ACN development through searching, LibGuide and Alerts development. To further aid the organization during this transformation of healthcare, a series of focus groups were held to help the clinical librarians determine how best to meet the clinician’s needs. Analysis of the results identified three main themes: lack of awareness of the clinical library resources and services; a need for training to be focused on the current clinical arena; and, a lack of knowledge that the librarians are experts in what they do. Now that we had the data we could apply process improvement tools. We employed Value Engineering to help us understand our key functions, the main one being ‘Empower Clinicians.’ We then used Logic Models to help us understand the way fo...
Source: Dragonfly - Category: Databases & Libraries Authors: Tags: News from Network Members Source Type: news