Congratulations to the team members at the facilities participating in the ACR® Learning Network who celebrated their graduation from the ACR ImPower program, which took them on a nine-month improvement journey. During the mid-November graduation presentations, each team told their improvement stories, including the challenges, lessons learned about what did and did not work and, most importantly, their successes toward achieving diagnostic excellence.
Twenty-two facilities across four improvement collaboratives (lung cancer screening, mammography positioning, recommendations follow-up and prostate MRI) made up the first cohort of the learning network. Throughout the program, facility teams charted a course of improvement using clinical data and shared improvement strategies and results with others in the same collaborative.
Several teams also presented learning network experiences at the 2022 ACR Quality and Safety Conference. The team from Hudson Valley Radiology, a private practice in Poughkeepsie, NY, which participated in the recommendations follow-up improvement collaborative, reported that they have become much more consistent with their follow-up recommendations and have improved the capture of lung nodule data with their efforts — resulting in an increased rate of patient follow-up and improved patient care.
Solis Mammography, operating more than 100 mammography centers through the United States, presented their experiences with the mammography positioning improvement collaborative. Their takeaway message: Participation was an amazing opportunity, and they highly recommend it to any organization striving to stand out as a leader in the field and grow a team that is encouraged and empowered to be healthcare heroes.
The team participating in the lung cancer screening improvement collaborative from Duly Health and Care, a multispecialty, physician-directed medical group in the Midwest, emphasized how a significant lesson learned is the importance of obtaining an intricate understanding of a process from start to finish to identify problems and design solutions, along with the need to be persistent, pointing out that large-scale projects are marathons, not sprints.
The team members expressed their enthusiasm to continue participation in the learning network by regularly submitting their performance data and sharing information about the results of new improvement interventions. There was also consensus about the benefit of applying the new improvement methodologies learned in the ImPower program to defining, approaching and solving problems going forward.
Interviews for cohort 2 applicants are now underway. Check the ACR Learning Network website to see if applications are still being accepted for specific improvement collaboratives. If cohort 2 applications are closed for the improvement collaborative of interest, please consider applying now for cohort 3 participation. The second cohort of the improvement collaboratives will be announced early in 2023.