Friday afternoon.  It has been a full week and my desk is still covered with things to follow up on.  So, I’m going to cover a few different important topics.

Let’s start off with National Nurses Week.  It ended yesterday on Florence Nightingale’s birthday.  As a kid, I always thought of Florence Nightingale as the topic that the nice girls who would grow up and be suburban housewives chose to write reports about back in fifth grade when we studied biographies.  I suspect that I, along with several of my classmates, may have confused Florence Nightingale with Florence Henderson who played the mother on the Brady Bunch.  It wasn’t until much later in life that I learned what a heroic figure Florence Nightingale was and what a positive role model she could be for young girls that didn’t want to disappear into some suburban submissive housewife role.  Now, I see on a nearly daily basis the too often overlooked heroism of Florence Nightingale acted out in the lives of nurses at CHC.

Some of the Hartford County CHC Nurses at a breakfast honoring their work.

Nurses, of course, are just part of the medical team that helps CHC function as a patient centered medical home.  All our staff has worked hard to help CHC receive national recognition as a patient centered medical home.  On Thursday, Dr. Daren Anderson, our chief quality officer attended a press conference in Hartford about patient centered medical homes.  An article in the CT Mirror, Lots of agreement on medical home concept, but little on details described the event and had this comment from Dr. Robert McLean:

“This model of primary care delivery will make it easier for patients to get good care. We all want that,” he said. “It will be less expensive for those paying for it through fewer unnecessary ER visits and avoidable hospitalizations, which is going to make it safer care. Everyone wants that.”

“The problem is that this is really, really hard for doctors to do,” he added. “And it’s expensive, and this also needs to be addressed as the plans go forward.”

While I’ve been impressed by CHC for receiving NCQA recognition, hearing others talk about how difficult it is provided me with another reminder of how hard our staff works to provide quality health care.

The article went on to note that “In Connecticut, only 113 practices and providers have received NCQA recognition as medical homes”.  This was followed by “Toubman said it’s unrealistic to expect to get even a quarter of Medicaid patients access to medical homes in the next year if the state requires providers to meet national standards.”

Now, I’m not sure what percentage of Medicaid patients in Connecticut come to CHC, but I suspect we may be able to help the state meet national standards.

Besides being National Nurses week, we are in the middle of Mental Health Month.  The American Psychological Association is calling for a Mental Health Month Blog Party on May 18.  Hopefully, we will be able to participate here.  If you are participating in the Blog Party, let me know.

To end things off, our AmeriCorps members are starting a cycling and walking trip across the state to lead service projects alongside community members during “Going the Distance to Build Healthy Communities” event.   If you aren’t following our AmeriCorps members, be sure to check out their Facebook Page and Twitter Stream.

How best to summarize this?  Perhaps the line that sums it up best is a message I received from Margaret Flinter who was at a presentation on clinical microsystems with key members of staff today.

Quality: The combined and unceasing efforts of everybody.

Thank you, everybody.