In 1994 Healthcentric Advisors was founded with a mission of improving the quality and patient safety of health care provided to Rhode Island's elderly. We embarked on this mission as an advisory and analytical organization contracted to administer the Medicare Quality Improvement Organization contract in the state.
Twenty-two years later Rhode Island is still our home base, but we are now administering the Medicare QIO contract across New England and providing health care quality-improvement services in many parts of the country for private and public entities.
Throughout our history we have come to learn there is no "silver bullet" to improve the quality and safety of health care. It cannot be improved merely through mandate, regulation or a mission statement on a glossy annual report.
The most important lesson is that people need to be empowered for long-lasting health care quality improvement to take place. In 2011 we adopted a new tagline – Advancing Healthcare Quality and Empowering People – because we believe the two go hand-in-hand. Health care quality cannot be advanced without the empowerment of people.
We empower our employees to be creative, self-directed and take risks in achieving our goals. We empower health care providers by providing them with actionable data and solutions they can use to make sustainable changes to improve the quality and safety of care provided by their organizations. And finally, we empower patients and consumers of health care to play an activist role in their own health and health care.
Empowerment. The medicine our health care system requires. •