Building on the innovative Institute of Medicine reports To Err Is Human and Crossing the Quality Chasm, Quality Through Collaboration: The Future of Rural Health offers a strategy to address the quality challenges in rural communities. Rural America is a vital, diverse component of the American community, representing nearly 20% of the population of the United States. Rural communities are heterogeneous and differ in population density, remoteness from urban areas, and the cultural norms of the regions of which they are a part. As a result, rural communities range in their demographics and environmental, economic, and social characteristics. These differences influence the magnitude and types of health problems these communities face. Quality Through Collaboration: The Future of Rural Health assesses the quality of health care in rural areas and provides a framework for core set of services and essential infrastructure to deliver those services to rural communities. The book recommends: Adopting an integrated approach to addressing both personal and population health needs Establishing a stronger health care quality improvement support structure to assist rural health systems and professionals Enhancing the human resource capacity of health care professionals in rural communities and expanding the preparedness of rural residents to actively engage in improving their health and health care Assuring that rural health care systems are financially stable Investing in an information and communications technology infrastructure It is critical that existing and new resources be deployed strategically, recognizing the need to improve both the quality of individual-level care and the health of rural communities and populations.

Second in a series of publications from the Institute of Medicine's Quality of Health Care in America project Today's health care providers have more research findings and more technology available to them than ever before. Yet recent reports have raised serious doubts about the quality of health care in America. Crossing the Quality Chasm makes an urgent call for fundamental change to close the quality gap. This book recommends a sweeping redesign of the American health care system and provides overarching principles for specific direction for policymakers, health care leaders, clinicians, regulators, purchasers, and others. In this comprehensive volume the committee offers: A set of performance expectations for the 21st century health care system. A set of 10 new rules to guide patient-clinician relationships. A suggested organizing framework to better align the incentives inherent in payment and accountability with improvements in quality. Key steps to promote evidence-based practice and strengthen clinical information systems. Analyzing health care organizations as complex systems, Crossing the Quality Chasm also documents the causes of the quality gap, identifies current practices that impede quality care, and explores how systems approaches can be used to implement change.

Despite pressure from the private sector to market their own custom solutions, the healthcare industry is coming around to the idea of applying the strategies of collaboration, open solutions, and innovation to meet the ever-changing demands for healthcare information to support quality and safety. This book provides a roadmap for improving quality of care using Electronic Health Records (EHR) and interoperable, consumer-centric health information solutions. Important Notice: The digital edition of this book is missing some of the images or content found in the physical edition.

On February 5, 2015, the Institute of Medicine Roundtable on Population Health Improvement hosted a workshop to explore the relationship between public health and health care, including opportunities, challenges, and practical lessons. The workshop was convened in partnership with the Association of State and Territorial Health Officials (ASTHO)-Supported Primary Care and Public Health Collaborative. Organized in response to the 2012 IOM report Primary Care and Public Health: Exploring Integration to Improve Population Health, this workshop focused on current issues at the interface of public health and health care, including opportunities presented by and lessons learned from the Centers for Medicaid and Medicare Services State Innovation Models program. The workshop featured presentations on several dimensions of the public health-health care relationship. Collaboration Between Health Care and Public Health summarizes the presentations and discussion of the event.

"I spend much time helping organizations capture requirements and even more time helping them recover from not capturing requirements. Many of them have gone through some motions regarding requirements as if they were sleepworking. It's time to wake up and do it right-and this book is going to be their alarm clock." - Jerry Weinberg, author of numerous books on productivity enhancement "In today's complex, fast-paced software development environment, collaboration-the intense peer-to-peer conversations that result in products, decisions, and knowledge sharing-is absolutely essential to success. But all too often, attempts to collaborate degenerate into agonizing meetings or ineffectual bull sessions. Ellen's wonderful book will help you bridge the gap-turning the agony of meetings into the ecstasy of effective collaboration." - Jim Highsmith, a pioneer in adaptive software development methods "Requirements by Collaboration presents a wealth of practical tools and techniques for facilitating requirements development workshops. It is suitable-no, essential reading-for requirements workshop facilitators. It will help both technical people and customer representatives participate in these critical contributions to software success." - Karl Wiegers, Principal Consultant, Process Impact, author of Software Requirements "The need for this particular book, at this particular time, is crystal clear. We have entered a new age where software development must be viewed as a form of business problem solving. That means direct user participation in developing 'requirements, ' or more accurately, in jointly working the business problem. That, in turn, means facilitated sessions. In this book, Ellen Gottesdiener provides a wealth of practical ideas for ensuring that you have exactly the right stuff for this all-important area of professional art." - Ronald G. Ross, Principal, Business Rule Solutions, LLC, Executive Editor, www.BRCommunity.com "Gottesdiener's years of software development experience coupled with her straight-forward writing style make her book a perfect choice for either a senior developer or a midlevel project manager. In addition to her technical experience, her knowledge of group dynamics balance the book by educating the reader on how to manage conflict and personality differences within a requirements team-something that is missing from most requirements textbooks...It is a required 'handbook' that will be referred to again and again." - Kay Christian, ebusiness Consultant, Conifer, Colorado "Requirements by Collaboration is a 'must read' for any system stakeholder. End users and system analysts will learn the significant value they can add to the systems development process. Management will learn the tremendous return they may receive from making a modest time/people investment in facilitated sessions. Facilitators will discover ways to glean an amazing amount of high-quality information in a relatively brief time." - Russ Schwartz, Computer System Quality Consultant, Global Biotechnology Firm "In addition to showing how requirements are identified, evaluated, and confirmed, Ellen provides important guidance based on her own real-world experience for creating and managing the workshop environment in which requirements are generated. This book is an engaging and invaluable resource for project teams and sponsors, both business and IT, who are committed to achieving results in the most productive manner possible." - Hal Thilmony, Senior Manager, Business Process Improvement (Finance), CiscoSystems, Inc. "Project managers should read this book for assistance with planning the requirements process. Experienced facilitators will enrich their knowledge. New facilitators can use this book to get them up to speed and become more effective in less time." - Rob Stroober, Competence Development Manager and Project Manager, Deloitte &Touche Consultdata, The Netherlands "While many books discuss the details of software requirement artifacts (for example, use cases), Ellen's new book zeros in on effective workshop techniques and tools used to gather the content of these artifacts. As a pioneer in requirements workshops, she shares her real-life experiences in a comprehensive and easy-to-read book with many helpful examples and diagrams." - Bill Bird, Aera Energy LLC "Requirements by Collaboration is absolutely full of guidance on the most effective ways to use workshops in requirements capture. This book will help workshop owners and facilitators to determine and gain agreement on a sound set of requirements, which will form a solid foundation for the development work that is to follow." - Jennifer Stapleton, Software Process Consultant and author of DSDM: The Methodin Practice "This book provides an array of techniques within a clear, structured process, along with excellent examples of how and when to use them. It's an excellent, practical, and really useful handbook written by a very experienced author!" - Jean-Anne Kirk, Director DSDM Consortium and IAF Professional Development "Ellen has written a detailed, comprehensive, and practical handbook for facilitating groups in gathering requirements. The processes she outlines give the facilitator tools to bring together very different perspectives from stakeholders elegantly and with practical, useable results." - Jo Nelson, Principal, ICA Associates, Inc., Chair, IAF (2001-2002) Requirements by Collaboration: Workshops for Defining Needs focuses on the human side of software development--how well we work with our customers and teammates. Experience shows that the quality and degree of participation, communication, respect, and trust among all the stakeholders in a project can strongly influence its success or failure. Ellen Gottesdiener points out that such qualities are especially important when defining user requirements and she shows in this book exactly what to do about that fact. Gottesdiener shows specifically how to plan and conduct requirements workshops. These carefully organized and facilitated meetings bring business managers, technical staff, customers, and users into a setting where, together, they can discover, evolve, validate, verify, and agree upon their product needs. Not only are their requirements more effectively defined through this collaboration, but the foundation is laid for good teamwork throughout the entire project. Other books focus on how to build the product right. Requirements by Collaboration focuses instead on what must come first--the right product to build.

Rapid changes in healthcare and public health offer tremendous opportunities to focus on process improvement. Public health departments and agencies increasingly work collaboratively with hospitals and other community partners to promote knowledge and improve collective impact through public and private sector coalitions. Solving Population Health Problems through Collaboration brings together population health experts and leaders to examine evidence-based intervention strategies, case studies in health departments and hospitals, health equity issues, core competencies, public health campaigns, step-by-step collaboration advice, and much more. Each chapter is written by a population health leader shaped by his or her experience implementing change in a community’s health, to demonstrate innovative methods and tools for building and leading sustainable community coalitions to effect real change. Designed to prepare population health workers in public health and healthcare settings to develop strategies for improved population health, this book is required reading for public health managers and health administrators as well as students enrolled in population health courses.

Teaching embodies many roles -- in the classroom through teacher-student interactions, and beyond the classroom through teacher-adult interactions. This book explains and demonstrates how collaboration and teamwork can help enhance professionalism and school quality by overcoming teachers' isolation in the classroom, in the school, and in their work. The contributing authors address: historic patterns of isolation; why collaboration is crucial for vibrant and sustained professionalism; principles of successful team collaboration in schools and other sectors; school districts' structure and support for collaborative teams; forces that motivate or restrain teachers' ability to collaborate; how teachers in grade-level teams perceive the quality of their training and support; team members' perceptions of their work in departments; teachers' use of evidence of student learning to improve teacher and organizational learning; and teacher-principal collaboration from the perspectives of exemplary teachers. These chapters provide insight into the complexity of teachers' roles, and indicate the necessity to build collaboration within the school and beyond.