HIROC subscribers short-listed for excellence award
Friday October 5, 2007 -- Jason Thompson
Voting is currently underway for the 2007 rL Solutions Canadian Healthcare Excellence in Quality Award (CHEQA).

Of the five finalists for the award, four are Healthcare Insurance Reciprocal of Canada (HIROC) subscribers. The awards are a joint initiative between rL Solutions, a company that develops software for healthcare organizations, and the Quality Healthcare Network (QHN).

The five finalists are:

• St. John’s Rehabilitation Hospital, Best Practices in Advanced Wound Care
• The Credit Valley Hospital, Rapid Assessment Zone (RAZ) for Canadian Triage Acuity Scale (CTAS) Level III patients in the Emergency Department
• Toronto East General Hospital, Improving Access through Innovation: Time to Treat – A System Redesign for Patients with Suspected Lung Cancer
• Trillium Health Centre, Promoting Patient Safety through Falls Prevention and Least Restraint
• City of Toronto – Carefree Lodge, Use of Hip Protectors in Hip Fracture Reduction

The City of Toronto’s Carefree Lodge is the only finalist that is not a HIROC subscriber. This is also the second consecutive year that The Credit Valley Hospital and Trillium Health Centre were short-listed as a finalist for the award. The winner is based on votes by QHN members.

Runa Dhar Whitaker, the director of communications for rL Solutions, says there’s a three-pronged approach to the awards, which began in 2005.

The first is to promote best practices, the second is to recognize that quality improvement projects are at the forefront of improving healthcare and the third is insider change.

The award winner is to be named Oct. 12 at the Halifax 7 Conference. In addition to a cash prize of $15,000, rL Solutions will pay for the award recipient to attend the Halifax 7 Conference in Ottawa.

Dhar Whitaker says rL Solutions doesn’t restrict how an organization might use their winnings, but says they’re encouraged to re-invest the money into future quality improvement initiatives.

“Last year the recipient put (the money) back into the same program and they just expanded the program out to some of their sister sites,” Dhar Whitaker says. “The year before, the recipient put it into new quality initiatives.”

There were 19 submissions for the award this year. The submissions were whittled down to five by a panel of judges. Dhar Whitaker says some of the criteria include the longevity of the project as well as the outcomes. Also considers how a project could be replicated in other organizations.

For more information on the five finalists or to vote online, visit www.cheqa.ca. Only QHN members can vote and each member organization has five votes. The deadline to vote is Oct. 9.