Read more about each essential characteristic of effective cardiovascular teams on the Alliance of Cardiovascular Professionals Blog.
[infographic] 5 Essential Characteristics of Effective Cardiovascular Teams
Benchmarking and Quality Improvement – Essential Characteristic #5
Is it obvious? Highly effective cardiovascular teams demonstrate commitment to cardiovascular quality improvement.
In a 2014 report entitled "Cardiovascular Care High Performers," the National Committee for Quality Assurance detailed the importance of benchmarking and continuous cardiovascular quality improvement.
What is the practice culture of effective cardiovascular teams, according to the report? It's characterized by a "strong organizational commitment to improving quality, to openness at being measured on performance and having results shared within the practice, to working on closing gaps and to trying new strategies to engage patients."
Commitment and openness, especially to being measured, sharing results, and working on closing quality gaps, has been proven to improve outcomes, from a single group to an entire state.
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Essential Characteristic #3 – Experts Need Checklists
"One of the most extensive recommendations in the consensus statement," writes the Advisory Board Company's Jake Hartman on a consensus statement released by cardiology leaders in a 2012 edition of Catheterization and Cardiovascular Interventions, "the group recommends that hospitals develop a detailed preprocedure checklist to ensure all safety precautions appropriate for the cath lab have been taken."
In December of 2009, Atul Gawande, MD released a book called A Checklist Manifesto, a strong argument for the use of pre-procedure checklists in medicine and other fields.
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