By Pat Gorman

Pat Gorman leads NER’s Healthcare Workforce Community of Interest and is a librarian at the Community College of Rhode Island.

The Healthcare Workforce COI begins its second year with a focus on the many healthcare professionals who are educated and trained in our local community colleges. From certificate programs to associate degree programs, the community college offers a variety of career paths to a highly diverse population and prepares them with the skills and competencies needed to succeed in a healthcare setting. In addition to the traditional academic degrees in fields such as nursing, dental hygiene, respiratory therapy and occupational therapy, these school often have additional workforce programs to support developing fields such as Health IT .

Our goal this year will be to look at the role of the community college the healthcare workforce, to become familiar with the resources available to them, to share regional news and personal experiences, and to explore the many ways that libraries can support these programs.

We invite those who are interested in this aspect of the healthcare workforce to join us in an initial web session on Wednesday, August 8 from 10:00-11:00. To start our thinking on the topic, here is a link to a short Q&A session with Roxanne Fulcher, Director of Health Professions Policy and the Health Professions Education Center at the American Association of Community Colleges: The Role of Community Colleges in Meeting the Nation’s Health Workforce Needs

Register for the HealthCare Workforce Community College Libraries Session on August 8th.

If you can not make the session please let us know you are interested in being a part of the Healthcare Workforce Community of Interest: send us an email.

New Podcasts in a Series About the AHRQ Quality Indicators Toolkit for Hospitals

The Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) has released two more audio interviews in a series focused on the use of quality improvement tools in the AHRQ Quality IndicatorsTM Toolkit for Hospitals. The toolkit is a free resource to guide hospitals through the process of using the AHRQ Inpatient Quality Indicators (IQIs) and Patient Safety Indicators (PSIs) to improve care.

• Analyzing Your IQI and PSI Rates: Amelia Haviland from Carnegie Mellon University talks about several considerations involved in analyzing and working with your IQI and PSI rates.
• Using the Documentation and Coding Tool: Kathy Vermoch and Suzanne Rogers from UHC discuss strategies that hospitals can put in place to improve their documentation and coding, both of which are critical to the accuracy of AHRQ Quality Indicator rates.

Download these interviews at http://www.ahrq.gov/qual/qitoolkitinterviews. (Audio file and transcript are available.)
Also available: Getting Started with the AHRQ QI Toolkit

• Future podcasts will address the following topics:
• Identifying Your Improvement Priorities
• Analyzing Your Barriers and Strategy Options
• Implementing Changes to Improve Performance on the IQI or PSI Measures
• Achieving Sustainable Improvements

Download the AHRQ Quality IndicatorsTM Toolkit for Hospitals at: http://www.ahrq.gov/qual/qitoolkitAccess the slide presentations and an audio recording from an introductory Webinar about the Toolkit at: http://www.ahrq.gov/qual/qitoolkit/webinar0215/index.html

More information on the AHRQ Quality Indicators is available at: http://www.qualityindicators.ahrq.gov/

(From AHRQ Press Release)

Learn more about the top 10 trends in academic libraries in this report by the Association of College and Research Libraries.

Our Healthcare Workforce COI group would like to hear from you, our New England members, about new initiatives, programs and events happening in your state to promote and support the health care workforce and, if applicable, the librarians that support them.