Dear Reader

Just as we enjoy congregating with relatives and friends every holiday season, we at CMS look forward each year to coming together with health quality stakeholders for the annual QualityNet Conference. For those of you who were able to join us in Baltimore, we thank you for your participation, and we look forward to hearing how you’re implementing and sharing what you’ve learned. I encourage those of you who could not participate to visit the conference website to download videos and presentations.

Having served as the QIO Program’s first national Learning and Action Network (LAN) meeting, QualityNet 2011 had a particularly powerful and high-impact agenda due to its "All-Teach All-Learn" format. As suggested by our conference theme --  “Learn. Act. Improve. Spread: Accelerating Large-Scale Improvement in Healthcare Quality” -- we expect participants to put what they’ve learned into action within their local communities and to widely communicate what works and what doesn’t, so that we can achieve truly dramatic changes in quality.

Whether you're a provider, patient or other health quality stakeholder, there's still time for you to join a LAN in your community, and to take advantage of all that the QIO Program and your local QIO have to offer. To illustrate the power of collaborative improvement initiatives, and how everyone benefits, we’ve developed a report that unveils our bold goals for transforming the healthcare delivery system, discusses our chief aims in improving quality and shares relevant models for success. I hope it will provide you with the encouragement and inspiration to make a commitment to action for better patient care, improved population health and lower health care costs through improvement in 2012.

Wishing you and yours a wonderful start to the New Year.

Jean Moody-Williams, R.N., MPP
Director, Quality Improvement Group
Office of Clinical Standards and Quality
Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services