New Member Spotlight Interview with Bethany Hall, Quality Insights
Written by Malik Chambers, Civitas Networks for Health
Meet Bethany Hall, Director of Strategic Relationships at Quality Insights
With a solid foundation as a Communications Specialist, Bethany honed her skills and expertise over 16 years, becoming a master communicator and a sought-after expert in her field.
One of the pivotal chapters in her career saw Bethany Hall at the helm of the Alzheimer’s Association. As Director, she led the charge in raising awareness, supporting families affected by the disease, and pushing for advancements in research and care. This passion for serving others led her to embrace a new mission: connecting the dots to make a difference in the lives of veterans and Medicare beneficiaries.
Today, as the Director of Strategic Relationships for Quality Insights, Bethany Hall continues to be a driving force behind positive health delivery transformations. Her unique blend of advocacy and communications experience has equipped her with an unparalleled skill set to foster strategic partnerships that empower organizations to deliver meaningful impact. We had the chance to sit down with Bethany and learn more about Quality Insights – let’s hear from her.
Q: What sparked Quality Insights’ interest in joining Civitas’ membership network?
A: Collaboration is a core value for Quality Insights and with the wide national network that Civitas provides, we are looking forward to finding new partners to learn from and joining forces with to make a difference in health care quality improvement. The variety of workgroups that Civitas offers has been such a great learning experience for all of us. The information and collaboration are incredibly valuable, timely, and it aligns so well with the company initiatives and projects we are currently working on and hope to do in the future.
Q: Can you explain more about Quality Insights’ role as a change agent for health care improvement in West Virginia and beyond?
A: We are a non-profit organization dedicated to providing education, understanding of data, peer networking, and hands-on technical assistance customized to provider needs across the continuum of care. Quality Insights contracts with and partners together with the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, multiple state departments of health, and the Department of Veterans Affairs to improve quality and measure outcomes.
We assist health care providers with a continuous quality improvement process to provide the right resources at the right time to meet providers where they are on their quality improvement journey. We continually evaluate data and results while modifying our tools and assistance accordingly throughout our engagements. Our immersive virtual learning experiences are delivered through Education Discover Collaboration (EDISCO), our learning management system, where users can find e-learns, micro-learning, podcasts, gaming, and other tools and resources. As change agents, connectors, and decision partners, we have supported the VA on initiatives to measure and improve the quality of health care delivered to Veterans for 30 years.
Q: What is Quality Insights most known for?
A: We are known to be a government contractor that is knowledgeable, and professional, and gets the job done with outcomes. We are also flexible – offering a “can-do” spirit and the ability to change course when needed. We hope to continue creating meaningful cross-sector collaborations to make lasting partnerships to improve patient outcomes and provider satisfaction. We look forward to meeting new people through Civitas and collaborating on ideas that can make a difference.
Q: What work is Quality Insights doing to address veterans’ care?
A: Some of the major health care issues we work to address are improving the care of Medicare beneficiaries by coordinating care in communities, improving transitions of care, improving patient safety, and preventing health care acquired infections, and managing chronic disease. We also are very proud of the work we do to improve the care our nation’s Veterans receive to measure the quality of health care at every VA facility across the country. We have a strong commitment to health equity and addressing the social determinants of health for a wide range of geographic areas. We work in Philadelphia, PA but also McDowell County, WV – two very different areas with different needs and different access to care and services.
We recently developed an eLearn Filling the Gaps: Appalachian Social Determinants of Health that has been well received by the providers in West Virginia, Virginia, and even some of the rural pockets we serve in Pennsylvania. We also work with many state departments of health on several Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) grants to address chronic disease.
Through this work, we’ve deployed Community Health Workers to be better connected at the community level to social services and the people living and working there. This has helped us gain a sort-of anthropological approach to quality improvement by truly understanding the people, the communities, the regions, the challenges, the services, and the providers before suggesting certain quality improvement activities.
Q: How is Quality Insights deploying its proprietary technology, eLearning tools, and more to support the organization’s strategic goals?
A: We have several new priorities for the organization that has been driven by our strategic future goals, our customer needs, and what providers we work with say would be helpful. We have started a Powered by Quality AI Data Innovation workgroup to help us combine our strong data science and analytics skills with new AI technology to increase efficiency through process automation.
We also recently established a Learning Journey internal team who has recruited a panel of national subject matter experts on various health care improvement topics to assist our team in delivering top-notch education through webinars, podcasts, and blog posts. We achieved Kirkpatrick Model Bronze certification which allows us to measure the impact of our education and show implementation and not just check-the-box understanding.
Q: What exciting milestones are on the horizon for Quality Insights?
A: We are celebrating our 50-year anniversary of improving health and health care this fall! We have a truly committed staff – many who have been on the front lines across multiple health care settings, working directly with patients and consumers – and we feel that helps us forge meaningful connections with the providers we are assisting. Our team truly believes in the work we do, and we all find our jobs incredibly rewarding and important! Our customers and our stakeholders consistently say that Quality Insights is great to work with.
For more information, please their website at Quality Insights.org
