Awards

January 24, 2012

Kaiser Permanente’s Schilling Listed Among Nation’s Clinical Quality Leaders

Lisa Schilling, RN, MPH, vice president of National Health Care Performance Improvement for Kaiser Permanente and director of Kaiser Permanente’s Performance Improvement Institute, was recently named as one of the nation’s 10 clinical quality leaders by Becker’s ASC Review, an online journal for ambulatory surgery centers.

Schilling is joined on the prestigious list by, among others, Donald Berwick, MD, the former administrator of the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, and Maureen Bisognano, Institute of Healthcare Improvement president and CEO.

“It is always an honor to be recognized,” said Schilling. “It’s also a reminder that by working together, we can continually elevate the level of safe, high-quality care and service we provide to our members, patients and communities. Kaiser Permanente is leading the way in transforming health care, and recognitions like these are truly a testament to our physicians and staff, who are among the best in the nation and around the world in providing high-quality care.”

The purpose of the Becker’s ASC Review list is to shine a light on leaders and organizations that raise awareness and advance causes for patient safety, infection control, patient-centered care and cost effectiveness. As vice president of health care performance improvement nationally for Kaiser Permanente, Schilling guides the planning and implementation of systems organization-wide to support its pursuit of best-in-class, high-quality performance in care-delivery operations.

Since 2008, Schilling and her team have guided leaders, “Improvement Advisors” (experts) and front-line teams on how to apply Kaiser Permanente’s improvement model to address system-level problems through the organization’s Improvement Institute. Over the past four years, the Performance Improvement group, in partnership with Kaiser Permanente’s Labor Management Partnership, is responsible for training tens of thousands of Kaiser Permanente staff and managers, providing them with deeper skills in an effort to help care-delivery teams learn how to improve performance.

Schilling has also been prolific at spreading the word of Kaiser Permanente’s accomplishments in this area. In a recent four-part series of articles in The Joint Commission for Quality and Patient Safety, Schilling was lead author of “Kaiser Permanente’s Performance Improvement System Part 1: From Benchmarking to Executing on Strategic Priorities,” “Kaiser Permanente’s Performance Improvement System Part 2: Developing a Value Framework,” and “Kaiser Permanente’s Improvement System, Part 4: Creating a Learning Organization.”

To view a detailed list of the honorees, please see the article on the Becker’s ASC Review website.