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Learn About What We Do!

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Learn About What We Do!

Join Now

Free Government Educational Services

Self-Help, Healthcare, Social and Cultural Education

Take action to improve your learning.

Learn what AHRQ and CMS do and how they can help!

Education For You

TeamSTEPPS® stands for Team Strategies and Tools to Enhance Performance and Patient Safety.

TeamSTEPPS® is:

  • an evidence-based framework aimed at optimizing patient and/​or resident care by improving communication and teamwork skills in healthcare settings;
  • another component to help support and enhance person-centered care by promoting the delivery of quality and safe care;
  • part of the ongoing patient safety movement which includes those receiving care across healthcare settings, including those living in nursing homes; and
  • focused on specific skills supporting team performance principles and concepts, and provides specific tools and strategies for improving communication and teamwork, reducing chance of error, and providing safer care.
Ask the Experts

CMS and Campaigns and Initiatives tied to clinical priorities

Learn more about the QIO program.

Training Focused for Clinicians and Providers:

AHRQ – Webinars for Primary Care Settings

CMS: As one of the largest federal programs dedicated to improving health quality at the community level, the goal to deliver person-centered, safer and more effective care in your community requires positive engaged citizens.

Clinicians, Did you know by participating in a local Quality Innovation Network-Quality Improvement Organization (QIN-QIO) initiative, you’ll gain access to valuable resources, including evidence-based improvement strategies that are aligned with other major health quality initiatives and that can help you prepare for participation in the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services’ Quality Payment Program.

Working with a QIN-QIO, you and your peers will share knowledge on critical health care quality and safety issues while discovering real-world best practices that will work in your own facility or practice. You’ll also help your peers replicate your successes and avoid your challenges – and they’ll help you do the same.

Partnering with the QIO Program will allow you to make a difference in your own community while contributing to national health quality goals that benefit all Americans. It’s an opportunity to share your organization’s experience and proven solutions with a broader community.

The QIO Program can also help you understand what is involved in different national quality initiatives and how they all work together to improve health care quality, accessibility and affordability. As one of the largest federal programs dedicated to improving health quality at the local level, their mission is to help you deliver person-centered, safer and more effective care in your community.

Patend and Family red circle center

Training Focused on Patient and Family Centered Care:

Improving the quality, safety, and value of the care you receive through the Medicare program is what the QIO Program is all about. QIOs provide resources to help you become more confident in making health care decisions and actively managing your health. Beneficiary and Family Centered Care-QIOs (BFCC-QIOs) are here to help when you have a complaint about the quality of care you have received, and when you need to appeal a health care provider’s decision to discontinue services or appeal your discharge from the hospital.

As a patient, you play an important role in improving health care for yourself and others. When you share your concerns with your QIO, you help us identify how the health care system can better meet the needs of other patients. Your experiences, both good and bad, give us the perspective to:

  • Identify opportunities for improvement
  • Develop solutions that address the real needs of patients
  • Inspire action by health professionals

It’s important to know how QIOs work with you, your family, and your health care team. Medicare has strict policies about our processes, designed to protect your privacy and give you objective information about the care you received. This website contains information and resources to empower you in your health care quality improvement decisions.

Steps to developing a cultural understanding.

  • What is Culture?
    • Culture is All-Encompassing
    • Culture is General and Specific
    • Culture is Learned
    • Culture is Symbolic
  • Nature and Natural Awareness
    • Health connections
    • Shared patterns
    • Worldview and Beliefs
  • Traditional Knowledge
    • Social Norms and Practices (SDOH)
    • Livlihoods and Resource Use
    • Cultural Shifts and Environmental Change
covid-prevention

Topics:

CMS: Quality Improveent Organizations - Sharing Knowledge - Improving Health Care.

Click on any of the titles below to jump directly to the self-paced learning module. Each module must be completed in a single session to receive a certificate. Look at the suggested time needed to complete the session.

To get started, check out the learning guides in bold at the bottom.  The first one is designed for leaders to understand how to register along with an explanation of the self-paced learning modules (which take at least 20 minutes to complete to recieve a certificate) and are intended for anyone with responsibility for hospital imfection prevention as well as infection control programs.

Behavior, Behavior Change and Hand Hygiene session:

Audience: Facility staff and hospital leadership responsible for infection prevention and control, quality improvement and compliance programs

Description: Everyone in health care knows how to wash their hands. So why is it so hard to practice thoroughly and consistently? In this webinar hosted by Jane Brock, MD, MSPH, you’ll learn:

  • The myriad barriers to hand hygiene your teams encounter in their work
  • Ways to facilitate full compliance with hand hygiene protocols through physical and process design changes
  • How to tap into the key principals of behavior change to empower, encourage and motivate your staff to make hand hygiene second nature

Universal PPE Best Practices & Role of a Trained Observer

Audience: Frontline staff and hospital leadership responsible for observing and ensuring protocol adherence of infection prevention and control, quality improvement and compliance programs

Description: The theory behind personal protective equipment (PPE) is simple, but working in a fast-paced, overburdened environment can cause lapses in protocol and best practices. Proper wear/​disposal and a reliable observer or buddy can minimize the chance of infection and possible outbreaks. In this webinar hosted by Brian Gardiner, BA, BSN, RN, you’ll learn:

  • Key points to remember in donning and doffing PPE
  • Ways to be a good PPE buddy
  • How to identify hazardous conditions, safety demands and stressors
  • Potential challenges with a buddy system and possible solutions

Using the Comprehensive Hospital Pandemic Preparedness Checklist for COVID-19 to identify gaps in compliance 

Audience: Facility staff and hospital leadership responsible for infection prevention and control programs, quality improvement and compliance

Description: It is not a matter of if, but when. Use of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's (CDC’s) pandemic preparedness checklist can help position your facility to be prepared to identify and treat cases of COVID-19, including a potential surge in cases, and how to prevent the spread of disease in your facility. In this webinar hosted by Brianna Gass, you’ll learn:

  • To apply the checklist to identify gaps in your facility processes
  • To identify training needs for facility staff by using the checklist
  • To adapt the checklist to best meet your facility’s specific needs

Infection Prevention and Control Risk Assessments for COVID-19

Audience: Facility staff and hospital leadership responsible for infection prevention and control, quality improvement and compliance programs

Description: As hospitals prepare for more COVID-19 surges, it is important to have infection control practices in place that align with CMS goals for COVID-19 prevention and control. In this webinar hosted by Meg Nugent, Hospital Quality Improvement Contractor (HQIC) program manager at Telligen, you’ll learn how your care team can lock in infection control processes that ensure safe, quality care that meets regulatory compliance expectations during COVID-19 surges by:

  • Understanding CMS’s infection control conditions of participation
  • Using the CMS hospital infection control worksheet as a self-assessment tool
Process Improvement

Training Focused for Long Term Care (LTC):

Promote Quality and Safety

Antibiotics – Train the Trainer series:

Exploring antibiotics and their role in bacterial infections

Antibiotic resistance: How it happens and strategies to decrease the spread of resistance

Antibiotic Stewardship

Clostridium difficile Part One: Clinical Overview  (part one – clinical overview)

Clostridium difficile (Part Two: Strategies to Prevent, Track, and Monitor C. difficile)

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Training Focused for Facilities:

 COVID-19 StAT Learning Series for Hospitals

The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS), with input from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and other stakeholders, has developed the COVID-19 StAT Learning Series for Hospitals. StAT stands for Standards, Approaches and Tactics for COVID-19 Infection Control & Prevention. This online, mobile-friendly, self-paced training is intended for hospital infection control leaders, frontline hospital staff and hospital administrators.

With the COVID-19 StAT Learning Series for Hospitals, you will find the latest tools and techniques, along with refreshed best practices for a new era of infection prevention and control.

Each self-paced learning module is approximately 15 minutes long. Take the COVID-19 StAT Self-Assessment to determine which trainings are right for you.

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Refer a Colleague!

Clinician and Provider

Review Your QPP Registration and Data

Be ready! If you are already registered have the security Official/Staff person log-in. If you aren’t sure who has access, create a system for your office so the following information is handy; gather the following:

  • Tax ID Number (TIN)
  • NPI (individual or all in the group)
  • Medicare PECOS PAC ID (numbers of members in the group)
  • PECOS Enrollment ID

It’s handy to have the Provider Enumeration Date and the last Update. As a member, you have access to an EXCEL workbook, ASK Us!

Connect to an Organization (practice) and Select a Role

This site outlines the steps to connect an Organization (like a practice, QCDR/Registry, or an APM Entity) and how to get the Security Official or Staff User role you need, and sign In.  If you have never registered, start here, a User Guide will be the tool needed. Once you are registered you will be redirected to HARP (this can take up to 15 min.)

QPP

Resources that speak to Timelines and Important Deadlines

 

Facilities and LTC

See how your facility will compare with other nursing homes!

Long Term Care – The Skilled Nursing Facility Value-Based Purchasing Program (SNF VBP)

Just as LTC learned where and how to access information and tools, CMS retired the site in Dec. 2020.  The new site, walks the user through the steps in retrieving data sets for specific data collection periods.

It’s handy to have tools! Visit our Education and Tools section or let us know how we can help!

As a Long-Term Care Facility (LTC) or Nursing Home 

  • CMS mandates are aligned to performance indicators related to the Healthcare Reform Act. The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) is a federal agency within the United States Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) that administers the Medicare program and works in partnership with state governments to administer Medicaid, the Children’s Health Insurance (CHIP), and health insurance portability standards.
  • Are you a Nursing Home or a facility that has beds for Rehab patients? Purposeful Concepts LLC offers the right level of leadership to guide your team with "role-based" strategies to best understand desired performance outcomes and pinpoint the change in a workflow that can make the difference. With LTC facilities now facing CMS mandates from both a federal and state standards align with components of care which are listed on a “LTC-Rule Job Aid” with measures or “F-tag” focus areas. CMS F-tags are used by each state department of Health and Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services to survey quality of care provided to residents in facilities.  We have a custom tool available that correlates to the current available F-tags that focus on the survey process.  Join us, we offer different levels of service to best fit the needs of your facility.
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