Accelerating research implementation to improve patient outcomes

Kaiser Permanente in Southern California among 42 health systems selected to participate in PCORI initiative

Kaiser Permanente in Southern California was recently selected to participate in a pioneering initiative aimed at improving patient outcomes, hosted by PCORI (Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute), a nonprofit research organization that seeks to empower people with actionable information about their health and health care choices.

Kaiser Permanente is 1 of 42 health systems nationwide participating in PCORI’s Health Systems Implementation Initiative. Kaiser Permanente will bring its on-the-ground experience and expertise in health care innovation to develop and implement viable strategies to actively adopt new evidence based on groundbreaking research studies. The ultimate goal is to shorten the estimated 17-year period from when research results that demonstrate improved patient outcomes are published and their implementation in routine health care practice.

“PCORI’s support is a strong endorsement of the robust implementation and evaluation ecosystem at Kaiser Permanente in Southern California, including our Department of Research & Evaluation,” says project lead Nancy Gin, MD, regional medical director of Quality and Clinical Analysis for Southern California Permanente Medical Group. “The new funding will allow us to expand and accelerate our existing portfolio of implementation projects and, as a result, facilitate even more rapid improvements in how we care for our patients.

“And while we improve our own patient care and outcomes, we will also share our insights and approaches with other health systems to improve patient care across all health care settings,” adds Dr. Gin, who also serves as the executive vice president of Quality and chief quality officer of The Permanente Federation.

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Through the initiative’s learning network, Kaiser Permanente and other participants will share experiences and learn from one another about best practices for implementation, evaluation methods, and other topics integral to successful implementation of innovative patient care strategies. Southern California Permanente Medical Group has a program — known as the Evidence Scanning for Clinical, Operational, and Practice Efficiencies — that focuses on shortening the time it takes to go from research to clinical practice. The program reduced the average implementation time to 4 to 36 months.

The initiative’s participants collectively represent 800 hospitals serving 79 million unique patients — nearly a quarter of the U.S. population — across 41 states and Washington, D.C.

See the full list on PCORI’s website.