Posted: 6/17/2015
Focus on quality and safety is research strength
As an academic medical center, Parkland Memorial Hospital is well known as a teaching hospital, but just as important to the future of medicine is the research that takes place within the system. Each year Parkland’s Office of Research Administration approves between 300 and 350 new studies, and more than 800 studies are active at any given time.
“Parkland has several strengths which make it an ideal place for research to be conducted,” said Susan Partridge, Parkland’s Vice President of Research Administration. “Our patient diversity and volume are the number one strength, but we also have several other advantages such as our focus on quality, safety and performance improvement.”
Partridge said Parkland is ideally suited to research that supports the Institute for Healthcare Improvement (IHI) Triple Aim Initiative: improving the patient experience, improving the health of populations and reducing the cost of healthcare. Research is also an important part of Parkland’s focus on nursing excellence and innovation.
As the nation focuses on how to deliver high quality, efficient healthcare, Parkland has been participating in research that focuses on the continuum of care beginning with the emergency department and inpatient hospitalization followed by ambulatory or outpatient follow-up care. These studies typically involve work with large databases across the healthcare system and provide a vast amount of data critical to outcomes-oriented research.
About one-third of the research studies conducted at Parkland are clinical trials which provide patients with access to medications, devices and therapies that are being evaluated. Leading research areas for clinical trials include oncology, trauma, brain injury, stroke, obstetrics, HIV medicine and diabetes.
“Research is a critical component of the work that takes place at Parkland,” Partridge said. “Because of the research and studies underway or that have been conducted in the past, our patients as well as those across the nation and beyond have access to cutting-edge therapies, which are important in diseases such as cancer, stroke, diabetes and others.”
Research conducted at Parkland has resulted in best practice standards for trauma care, burn care, obstetrics and neonatal care. The “Parkland burn formula,” which is a calculation used to estimate the amount of replacement fluid required for the first 24 hours in a burn patient to ensure they remain hemodynamically stable, emerged from research conducted at Parkland. The formula continues to be used nationally and internationally in the treatment of burns. And, University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center physicians at Parkland wrote the book – literally – used by millions of obstetric practitioners. Williams Obstetrics is now in its 24th edition.
Organizations such as the National Institutes of Health (NIH), Agency for Healthcare Research & Quality (AHRQ), Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute (PCORI) and the Department of Defense (DOD) fund many of Parkland’s research projects. Clinical trials are also funded by national oncology cooperative group organizations, the pharmaceuticals industry and device manufacturers.
The move to the new Parkland Memorial Hospital, which opens on August 20, will present opportunities for research on how the delivery of care changes with modern design and new technology, Partridge said.
“We will be able to look at some of our healthcare delivery methods in the current hospital and then compare them to what works or doesn’t in the new facility and from there develop best practices in several areas,” she said. “Research is enabling us to do this.”
For more information about clinical trials at Parkland, please visit our website at www.parklandhospital.com