'We should be in the vanguard of reducing utilization, improving quality'.

New York-Presbyterian, a sprawling $5 billion academic medical center complex based in Manhattan, houses two Ivy League medical schools. Yet in recent years, the system has grown to nine hospitals, including several in New York City's outer boroughs and nearby suburbs. Modern Healthcare recently spoke with CEO Dr. Steven Corwin about the system's evolving strategy. This is an edited transcript.

A regional health collaborative formed By NewYork-Presbyterian aims to improve the health of a largely Hispanic community.

Communities of poor, low-income immigrants with limited English proficiency and disproportionate health burdens pose unique challenges to health providers and policy makers. NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital developed the Regional Health Collaborative, a population-based health care model to improve the health of the residents of Washington Heights-Inwood. This area is a predominantly Hispanic community in New York City with high rates of asthma, diabetes, heart disease, and depression. NewYork-Presbyterian created an integrated network of patient-centered medical homes to form a "medical village" linked to other providers and community-based resources. The initiative set out to document the priority health needs of the community, target high-prevalence conditions, improve cultural competence among providers, and introduce integrated information systems across care sites. The first six months of the program demonstrated a significant 9.2 percent decline in emergency department visits for ambulatory care-sensitive conditions and a 5.8 percent decrease in hospitalizations that was not statistically significant. This initiative offers a model for other urban academic medical centers to better serve populations facing social and cultural barriers to care.

NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital: translating innovation into practice.

BACKGROUND: NewYork-Presbyterian (NYP) Hospital, a 2,242-bed not-for-profit academic medical center, was formed by a merger of The New York Hospital and The Presbyterian Hospital in the City of New York. It is also the flagship for the NewYork-Presbyterian Healthcare System, with 37 acute care facilities and 18 others. OVERALL APPROACH TO QUALITY AND SAFETY: The hospital embeds safety in the culture through strategic initiatives and enhances service and efficiency using Six Sigma and other techniques to drive adoption of improvements. Goals are selected in alignment with the annual strategic initiatives, which are chosen on the basis of satisfaction surveys, patient and family complaints, community advisory groups, and performance measures, among other sources. USE OF INFORMATION TO SET AND EVALUATE QUALITY GOALS AND PRIORITIZE INITIATIVES: A new business intelligence system enables online, dynamic analysis of performance results, replacing static paper reports. Advanced features in the clinical information systems include computerized physician order entry; interactive clinical alerts for decision support; a real-time infection control tracking system; and a clinical data warehouse supporting data mining and analysis for quality improvement, decision making, and education. APPROACH TO ADDRESSING THE SIX IOM QUALITY AIMS: To achieve clinical, service, and operational excellence, NYP focuses on all Institute of Medicine quality aims.

Hypopharyngeal perforation near-miss during transesophageal echocardiography.

OBJECTIVES/HYPOTHESIS: The traditional blind passage of a transesophageal echocardiography probe transorally through the hypopharynx is considered safe. Yet, severe hypopharyngeal complications during transesophageal echocardiography at several institutions led the authors to investigate whether traditional probe passage results in a greater incidence of hypopharyngeal injuries when compared with probe passage under direct visualization. STUDY DESIGN: Randomized, prospective clinical study. METHODS: In 159 consciously sedated adults referred for transesophageal echocardiography, the authors performed transesophageal echocardiography with concomitant transnasal videoendoscopic monitoring of the hypopharynx. Subjects were randomly assigned to receive traditional (blind) or experimental (optical) transesophageal echocardiography. The primary outcome measure was frequency of hypopharyngeal injuries (hypopharyngeal lacerations or hematomas), and the secondary outcome measure was number of hypopharyngeal contacts. RESULTS: No perforation occurred with either technique. However, hypopharyngeal lacerations or hematomas occurred in 19 of 80 (23.8%) patients with the traditional technique (11 superficial lacerations of pyriform sinus, 1 laceration of pharynx, 12 arytenoid hematomas, 2 vocal fold hematomas, and 1 pyriform hematoma) and in 1 of 79 patients (1.3%) with the optical technique (superficial pyriform laceration) (P =.001). All traumatized patients underwent flexible laryngoscopy, but none required additional intervention. Respectively, hypopharyngeal contacts were more frequent with the traditional than with the optical technique at the pyriform sinus (70.0% vs. 10.1% [P =.001]), arytenoid (55.0% vs. 3.8% [P =.001]), and vocal fold (15.0% vs. 3.86% [P =.016]). CONCLUSION: Optically guided trans-esophageal echocardiography results in significantly fewer hypopharyngeal injuries and fewer contacts than traditional, blind transesophageal echocardiography. The optically guided technique may result in decreased frequency of potentially significant complications and therefore in improved patient safety.

Model for a merger: New York-Presbyterian's use of service lines to bring two academic medical centers together.

NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital is the result of the 1998 merger of two large New York City academic medical centers, the former New York and Presbyterian Hospitals, and is affiliated with two independent medical schools, the Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons and the Joan and Sanford J. Weill Medical College of Cornell University. At the time of the merger, the hospital faced a number of significant challenges, chief among them the clinical integration of the two medical centers. Size, separate medical schools, geography, and different histories and cultures all presented barriers to collaboration. To bring about the needed clinical alignment, the hospital turned to service lines as a way to realize the benefits of clinical integration without forcing the consolidation of departments. In this article, members of the hospital's senior management review the thinking behind the hospital's use of the service lines, their development and operation, and the significant, positive effects they have had on volume, clinical quality, clinical efficiency, best practices, and revenue management. They discuss how the service lines were used to bring together the two clinical cultures, the impact they have had on the way the hospital is operated and managed, and why service lines have worked at NewYork-Presbyterian in contrast to other hospitals that tried and abandoned them. Service lines play an increasingly central role in the hospital's clinical and business strategies, and are being extended into the NewYork-Presbyterian health care system.