Issue link: https://beckershealthcare.uberflip.com/i/759108
85 STRATEGY & INNOVATION Ascension Launches National Rebranding Campaign, Creates New Divisional Structure By Ayla Ellison S t. Louis-based Ascension is implementing a new structure that organizes the system's areas of exper- tise into two divisions — healthcare and solutions. Ascension's Healthcare Division includes the system's hospitals, community clinics, Ascension Senior Living, Ascension At Home, Ascension Clinical Holdings and As- cension Medical Group. The system's Solutions Division includes several Ascension subsidiaries that provide var- ious services, including clinical care management, bio- medical engineering and venture capital investing. To create more consistent names for its facilities, the system is also rolling out a national rebranding campaign to incor- porate the Ascension name. The hospitals and other sites of care that are part of Ascension Michigan and Ascension Wisconsin will be the first to receive name changes. For ex- ample, Columbia St. Mary's Hospital in Milwaukee will be renamed Ascension Columbia St. Mary's Hospital. "We have an obligation to provide high-quality, afford- able care and quality outcomes, with an enhanced ex- perience for our patients and our providers," said An- thony R. Tersigni, EdD, president and CEO of Ascension. "Adopting a unified mission statement and creating a clear and consistent identity reflect our collaborative na- tional system and move us in the right direction." n Precision Medicine Trial 'First of its Kind' to Demonstrate Improved Patient Outcomes By Max Green T ailoring medical treatments to the needs of specific pa- tients seems like a no-brainer for improving outcomes, but it's a reality that has eluded healthcare as it stands today, becoming the primary focus of the precision medicine movement. Researchers involved in a clinical trial of cancer are touting the results of their study as some of the first to demonstrably show a precision medicine-style approach is better for patients. According to the results, presented Sept. 23 at the Molecular Analysis for Personalised Therapy conference in London, pa- tients with advanced cancer who underwent gene mapping to inform tailored treatment had their tumors grow back thir- ty percent more slowly than compared to previous therapies they received. "This is the first precision medicine trial to show that analyzing a person's DNA improves treatment options for patients with late stage cancer," Jean Charles Soria, MD, PhD, principal in- vestigator on the trial with the Gustave Roussy Cancer Campus in Paris, said in a statement. "And these results are particularly exciting because in some cases we were testing experimen- tal drugs, and found that we could slow down the growth of tumors in around one in five patients with advanced cancer." Out of 1,110 patients, the 199 whose genes were mapped had various types of cancer, including lung, breast, head and stom- ach, among others. Their cancers were delayed in returning by as much as 32 months, according to the researchers. n NQF Announces Winners of Innovation Challenge to Improve Quality Measures By Kelly Gooch National Quality Forum named five healthcare organizations as winnres of its Innovation Chal- lenge, a contest to promote innovation in health- care quality measure development. e contest, launched Sept. 18, challenged NQF members and others to submit ideas to improve quality metrics aimed at responding to measure- ment gaps identified by NQF's Measure Incuba- tor work groups, according to a news release. NQF named five winning concept papers for its Innovation Challenge, marking the first step toward the launch of its Measure Incubator Learning Collaborative. Here are the 2016 Innovation Challenge win- ners and their organizational affiliations, as stated in the news release. • Charlotta Lindval, Dana-Farber Can- cer Institute (Boston) — proposes using natural language processing to develop quality measures in palliative surgery with EHR data. • S. Mani Marashi, Henry Ford Health System (Detroit) — describes a suc- cessful two-year pilot to report hospi- tal-acquired venous thromboembolism events in real-time using data from EHRs, instead of claims. • Robert Philips, American Board of Family Medicine — proposes using a new data registry open to all primary care physicians to identify and develop efforts to improve clinical practice and quality measures. • Ellen Shultz and Michelle Langer, American Institutes for Research — suggest using "bookmarking," a meth- od widely used in educational testing, to score and classify patient-reported outcome measures and address this critically important measure gap area. • Tracy Spinks, MD Anderson Cancer Center (Houston) — outlines a new, streamlined, standardized approach to implementing PRO measure sets in EHRs. e Innovation Challenge winners will pres- ent their papers during NQF webinars later in 2016, according to NQF. Each winner will re- ceive a $2,000 award. n