Welcome!

Check out our site! Thanks to our resident Webmaster, Mike Gaynor, we have a super RIAHQ website with a logo he designed exclusively for us. Look over each page and let us know your reaction. We would like it to be a convenient communication tool for our Rhode Island state chapter of the National Association for Healthcare Quality. Of course, if you have any news or information you would like to add, please send it along to Mike for posting: mgaynor@lifespan.org

You will see we have other projects in the works here as well. In our effort to define our membership, we will ask our Spring Breakfast Meeting attendees (Plan to join us May 23rd!) to update their questionnaire information as needed and bring copies back with them for fellow quality healthcare professionals to complete. Could joining be easier? Fill it out, fax it in, and be a RIAHQ member. Currently, there are no dues!

Why join us? Our new Bylaws, available on this site, spell it out for you. They are now "official" with our vote of approval on May 18, 2010. This association is for education, exam support, resources, and networking. It is open to all healthcare personnel interested in quality care and patient safety. We have over fifty members now.

The simple step of becoming a member could mean savings on registration for our Quality Education Day on October 20th, 2011. Currently, we are in the process of application for educational credits for your attendance at our fall program of speakers and presentations, The View on Q from different perspectives on Quality Healthcare, including that of a patient's family member. For the last two years, the patient/family perspective sharing has been the most appreciated hour of the day.

Sharing (venting?!) and networking are important at our events and here on our website. At our recent meeting, we discussed how to make it more useful. One member would like to start an interactive blog on healthcare reform. We would like to bring together those of you who are preparing for the CPHQ exam. Books and study guides are expensive, and members are willing to share. We did discuss local career opportunities. There is no objection to your posting a job on our site. It was suggested that we could charge a fee for this and limit posted days to keep current. A list of articles and/or books would be welcome. A private member list and list serv set-up are also possibilities. And I personally would like to assemble a history of our RI group. So, we are working with Mike to make all of these ideas real. And if you're website-savvy, maybe you could help him out!

Look around and let us know what you think. Explore, enjoy, and visit often.

Those DATES to REMEMBER:
May 23, 2011 Spring Breakfast Meeting & Election
October 20, 2011 Quality Education Day

Paula Bolig - RIAHQ President