In 2006, the Joint Commission proudly celebrates the 10th anniversary of the Ernest Amory Codman Award with "Advancing the Dream: A Century of Progress, A Decade of Recognition, Excellence for the Millennium."
Since 1997, 48 organizations and individuals have received the Codman Award for excellence in performance measurement. This prestigious award recognizes excellence in the use of outcomes measurement by organizations and individuals to achieve improvements in the quality and safety of healthcare.
The Codman Award takes its origin in the revolutionary concepts of Dr Codman, who in 1910 proposed a system for physicians and hospitals to track every patient treated to determine whether individual treatments were effective. If a treatment was not effective, an effort would be made to determine why, so that similar cases could be treated successfully in the future. Dr Codman's "end results" system emphasized the importance of using outcomes measurement for performance improvement.
An application for the 2006 Codman Award is available online for more than 15,000 healthcare organizations and programs accredited or certified by the Joint Commission, including long-term care organizations.
You can help in "Advancing the Dream" by submitting your long-term care organization's performance improvement project for the 2006 Ernest Amory Codman Award. Named after the physician regarded in healthcare as the "father of outcomes measurement," the Ernest Amory Codman Award showcases the effective use of performance measurement by healthcare organizations to improve the quality and safety of healthcare.
Awards are given only to meritorious applications and are not necessarily presented in each category. A panel of national experts in quality measurement and improvement will select the recipients of the 2006 Awards.
Healthcare organizations may submit any initiative that reflects the accomplishment of a significant performance improvement. Applicant organizations must demonstrate an organizationwide commitment and approach to data-driven improvement. Joint Commission-accredited healthcare organizations and certified programs may submit more than one initiative. The 2006 Codman Awards will be presented during the Joint Commission National Conference on Quality and Patient Safety in November 2006, which will include video presentations of the award-winning initiatives. Winning organizations receive a specially designed award and national recognition for their performance improvement efforts.
Please visit http://www.jcaho.org/codman.htm to find out more information and to get the 2006 Ernest Amory Codman Award Program application. The application is also available by calling the Joint Commission's Customer Service Center at (630) 792-5800.
The deadline for applications is on February 17, 2006.