The Joint Commission has released the results of a study examining the usefulness of leadership engagement with frontline hospital staff as a means through which to improve the quality of patient care.
The intervention, called Leveraging Frontline Expertise, was piloted at an urban Veteran Affairs medical center on the east coast. Researchers tracked the intervention and resulting quality benchmarking measures for 20 months.
Managers viewed the intervention positively, while staff had mixed feelings, according to the study. Safety climate perceptions deteriorated relative to controls in units in which the intervention was implemented.
According to the study, while care quality improved somewhat, the work is an important stepping stone in examining approaches to hierarchical communication in quality-improvement efforts.
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