Strategies for managing quality in population health careUse of the Institute for Healthcare Improvement’s Triple Aim framework Value-based reimbursement modelsPatient-centered discharge planning and case managementImproving initiatives aimed at bettering patient healthExternal regulations and accreditation standardsLean and Six Sigma improvement tools and techniquesHealthcare application of improvement models from other industries

Patrice L. Spath, MA, RHIT, is a health information management professional with broad experience in healthcare quality and safety improvement. She is president of Brown-Spath & Associates, a healthcare publishing and training company in Forest Grove, Oregon, and an adjunct assistant professor in the Department of Health Services Administration of the University of Alabama at Birmingham, where she teaches online graduate-level courses in patient safety. She also teaches quality management and patient safety in the undergraduate and graduate health administration programs at Pacific University in Oregon, and she is a guest lecturer on patient safety in the healthcare simulation master’s program at Drexel University College of Medicine in Philadelphia. Over the past 35 years, she has presented more than 400 educational programs and authored numerous books and journal articles on healthcare quality management and patient safety topics.