What is a Learning Health System?
The Learning Health System (LHS) is a novel and rapidly evolving approach for improving the outcomes of individuals, populations, and health care organizations. Learning Health Systems are organizations in which knowledge generation processes are embedded in daily practice to produce continually improved care.
AHRQ Evidence-Based Practice Center Program. Borsky et al, 2019.
In a learning health system, internal data and experience are systematically integrated with external evidence and that knowledge is used to drive improvements that can change people life and health. As a result, patients get higher quality, safer, and more efficient care, and health care delivery organizations become better places to work.
Learning Health System Award Program (LHS-AP)
The LHS-AP offers an innovative funding mechanism designed to provide resources to support projects that lead to improvements in quality, value and patient experience using improvement science, informatics, and rigorous QI methodology. The projects should address challenges affecting the health of people in Western Massachusetts through continuous learning and improvement.
For more information, please see the Request for Applications document.
Learning Health System Rounds at Baystate Health
LHS Rounds are a monthly venue where members of the Division of Healthcare Quality, Operations Excellence, Clinical Informatics, Epidemiology and Biostatistics, and the Department of Healthcare Delivery and Population Sciences collaborate with clinicians from across Baystate Health to address topics of high strategic importance to our health system. Our goal is to systematically gather and apply evidence, analytics, and informatics in real-time to guide improvements in our organization and transform practice.
Collaboration is at the heart of the LHS and convenes experts that share a common goal: to develop deeper understanding of learning processes and their supporting environments.
What will the LHS Rounds look like?
We will bring together individuals from across the health system with expertise in evidence-based practice, informatics, change management, quality and safety, study design, analytics, data visualization, and more to transform delivery of care and accelerate our journey towards becoming a LHS. At these sessions, we will design, implement, and evaluate initiatives using rigorous methods and produce novel insights that can be rapidly implemented to improve the outcomes of the population in western Massachusetts and the Baystate Health system’s performance.
If you have topics, suggestions, or feedback in mind, please contact Dr. Lauren Westafer at Lauren.Westafer@baystatehealth.org or Aubri Drake at Aubri.Drake@baystatehealth.org.
Upcoming LHS Rounds
- Thursday, March 21st, 2024 - Stephanie Hucker: Improving Continuity through Communication: Establishing Team Meetings at High Street Neighborhood Health Center
- Thursday, April 25th, 2024 - Heather Hsu (Topic TBD)
- Thursday, June 20th, 2024 - TBD
- Thursday, July 18th, 2024 - Andy Beck (Topic TBD)
- Thursday, September 19th, 2024 - Seppo Rinne (Topic TBD)