The American Hospital Association’s Quality Center, a forum for practice-focused learning, is a repository of action-oriented tools and information to help hospital executives make the case for improved hospital quality and patient safety, as well as plan and implement quality improvement activities and assess progress. NORC led a project team that helped the AHA develop and launch the Quality Center’s website.

NORC led both the technology and content development tasks for all four of the Quality Center project’s key activities.

• Knowledge repository. The knowledge repository is a library that draws upon the vast wealth of hospital quality and patient safety expertise from government and other sources. Rather than act as a clearinghouse, the knowledge repository contains only the leading, most trusted and highly proven materials for hospital executives. In many cases, clinical and practitioner literature were synthesized and/or translated to better reflect the needs of hospital executives in strategic planning for quality initiatives.

• Opportunity assessment. This self-assessment tool helps hospital leaders evaluate their organizations’ needs for quality and patient safety improvements. The on-line assessment provides immediate results for leaders to view and use in accessing the most appropriate resources for their needs in the knowledge repository.

• Member matching. The professional user matching service is a particularly creative innovation. This aspect of the Quality Center aims to foster a collaborative community of leading professionals with a responsibility for quality initiatives at the nation’s hospitals.

• Web portal. The public web portal houses the knowledge repository, opportunity assessment and member matching service and provides an overall communications hub for all AHA Quality Center resources.

Visit the AHA Quality Center’s website