Quality Program
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About our Quality team
Introducing
our department
After 25 years, clinical quality and patient safety remain the cornerstones upon which Somnia rests. In fact, our Clinical Quality Excellence (CQE) program has been used as a model by some of our clients when designing their own best practices and protocols. We remain proud of the fact that we were the first anesthesia-only management company named a Patient Safety Organization by the Agency for Healthcare Research & Quality.
By providing our clinical staff with individualized dashboards, educational resources, and strong clinical leadership, our clinicians are able to focus on what they do best – care for patients. We do the heavy lifting of tracking and trending clinician data to ensure their understanding of performance, and we create gap-specific training modules to help our clinicians improve across all areas of anesthesia care.
Quality Resources
Clinical Quality Excellence (CQE) Program
Our Accomplishments
The Somnia Patient Safety Organization (PSO) has been recognized by the AHRQ since 2011
Maintain accreditation readiness for hospital and ambulatory clients (TJC, DNV, ACHC, AAAHC, Quad A, etc.)
Developed “Somnia University” utilizing Learning Management Systems
In 2023, 1,112 participants completed 1,150 credit hours through Somnia’s 32 ACCME accredited courses/activities
Implemented the Anesthesia Remediation and Refresher Program (ARRP) enabling anesthesiologists back into the workforce
Created Clinician Performance Dashboards offering real-time productivity and quality metrics
research &
PI projects
Somnia’s quality department prides itself on delivering unparalleled patient care. As leaders in the anesthesia space it is our obligation to remain innovative and promote anesthesia care and patient safety through real-time data analytics and evidence-based protocols. We routinely conduct gap analyses to identify areas of improvement in knowledge, skill, and performance, and when warranted, proceed with thoughtful research techniques or performance improvement project plans. Somnia has had the honor of presenting numerous research studies and PI projects at perioperative and anesthesia conferences across the country, and will continue to contribute to the field of research.
Facility
Dashboards
To help our leaders make evidence-based decisions, Somnia utilizes a robust business intelligence tool to provide dashboards to corporate and clinical leadership. Dashboards are equipped with productivity and case volume metrics, OR utilization and efficiency graphs, and additional figures to demonstrate OR usage 24/7.
Patient Experience
Giving our patients a voice by collecting patient satisfaction surveys provides us with an opportunity to improve the patient experience at every turn. We collect surveys for both surgical and obstetrics cases, and engage in a rewarding red alerts process that allows us to follow up with patients based on their responses.
Our surveys cover the entire patient process from start to finish, and includes key items such as staff friendliness and introductions, explanation of risks, benefits and care, complications and overall visit satisfaction. We disseminate monthly reports at both the facility and clinician level for benchmarking purposes. The clinician patient satisfaction data is included in scorecards to proactively identify areas of improvement.
Over the years, we have found that these surveys not only deliver much needed feedback to anesthesia clinicians, but it also enhances surgeon confidence with the anesthesia care team.
Ongoing Professional
Practice Evaluation (OPPE)
Our CQE program delivers automated, state-of-the-art OPPEs that are equipped with both quantitative and qualitative summaries on a biannual basis for all anesthesia clinicians. Fields include billed hours, total cases, units benchmarking, case breakdowns by anesthesia method and ASA classifications, surgical and OB patient satisfaction, and adverse events. Clinicians are also evaluated on clinical knowledge, practice-based learning and improvement, interpersonal and communication skills, and professionalism.
Adverse Event Reporting
A proprietary outcomes form is completed for each case. The outcomes forms are equipped with fields to track case urgency, ASA classification, procedure type, anesthesia method, co-morbid conditions, and adverse events (if applicable). These forms are used to generate monthly quality reports that are shared with on-site clinical leadership to identify areas of improvement and address gaps in performance.
Adverse event rates are calculated monthly at both the site and clinician level and are further risk stratified to provide targeted analytics. All information and analytics generated are protected by the Somnia Patient Safety Organization (PSO).
We have approximately 1M cases in our database for quality benchmarking purposes.
Clinician Rounding
Somnia has a national footprint with a presence in 14 states which is why it is imperative that we routinely engage with our clinicians. Our CQE program includes a platform for clinician rounding which enables clinical leaders to round on their staff on a quarterly basis. Rounding provides a voice for our anesthesia staff, creates a culture of recognition, improves processes, enhances quality and patient safety, and has demonstrated the ability to increase clinician retention. Furthermore, the qualitative information we receive through this process allows us to validate the quantitative information we evaluate from other areas of the CQE program.
Survey Readiness
Somnia employs a Manager of Accreditation whose primary responsibility is to identify and verify compliance with established state and federal regulations, correcting any noted deficiencies through policy, training, or other measures to ensure patient safety.
- Unannounced Mock Anesthesia Survey Visits
- Post-Survey Reports
- Leadership Review of Findings
- Action Plan Development
- Hot Topics/Updates Shared
- YouTube Series
