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Innovation and Excellence
Gage Awards
The 2023 Gage Awards program honors the outstanding work of America’s Essential Hospitals members.
Our Gage Awards recognize members for successful improvement projects, spread best practices and innovative programs, and support our research, policy, and advocacy work by sharing stories of member successes with external audiences.
America’s Essential Hospitals will formally honor 2023 Gage Award recipients at a luncheon on Thursday, June 15, during VITAL2023.
Applications are currently closed.
Categories
Population Health
Gage Awards for population health recognize successful programs that aim to improve health outcomes for a defined population or community by addressing the social and economic factors that influence health.
Social determinants of health can include housing instability, food insecurity, transportation needs, utility needs, education, family and social supports, employment and income, interpersonal violence, health behaviors, health literacy, community infrastructure, legal needs, structural racism, and social needs screening.
Population health programs are not alike; but key features may include:
- working outside hospital walls to care for and/or improve the health of individuals living in a specified geographic area (e.g., county, city, etc.).
- a focus on promoting equitable health outcomes for vulnerable populations.
- using community-based resources to support population health.
- addressing social and economic factors (e.g., housing instability, food insecurity, utility needs, interpersonal violence, and transportation).
- forming community partnerships to combat structural racism.
- creating a learning organization able to rapidly deploy best practices.
- forming community partnerships to address population health.
Highly competitive programs will be innovative; engage the community and involve patients throughout the process, from design and implementation to completion; and partner with community-based organizations to reduce health disparities, improve health equity, and/or combat structural racism in vulnerable populations.
- Judging Criteria
- The program is innovative, featuring new and/or original methods, implementation, or delivery.
- The program was well-defined.
- The program used a rigorous needs assessment and program evaluation.
- The program addressed the social determinants of health/upstream factors.
- The program was accessible to geographically based individuals, not just patients already attributed to the health care system.
- The program seeks to intentionally reduce health disparities, improve health equity, and /or combat structural racism in vulnerable populations.
- Patients, families, and/or the community were engaged and intentionally involved in program design, planning, and development.
- The program effectively used community-based resources and partnered with other community organizations.
- Leadership was engaged in the project, and applicants provided a signed letter from leadership.
- Applicants reported at least one year of data.
- The results and baseline data demonstrated improved health outcomes.
Quality
Gage Awards for quality recognize activities that improve the delivery of care, improve patient experience, engage patients and their families, reduce staff burnout and/or reduce or eliminate harmful events affecting individual patients or groups of patients.
Improvement programs may include the use of evidence-based interventions, standardized practices, bundles of care, and checklists. Highly competitive programs will be innovative; show leadership commitment; and engage the community and patients from design to completion to reduce health disparities, improve health equity, and/or combat structural racism in vulnerable populations.
- Judging Criteria
- The project is innovative, featuring new and/or original methods, implementation, or delivery.
- The project was well-defined.
- A form of evaluation was used.
- Leadership was engaged in the project, and applicants provided a signed letter from leadership.
- Front-line staff was involved in the project.
- Patients and/or families were engaged and intentionally involved in the design, planning, and/or development of the program.
- Applicants reported at least one year of data.
- The project results demonstrated improved outcomes.
- The project’s outcomes promoted health equity, reduced health disparities, and /or combated structural racism in vulnerable populations.
Recognition
America’s Essential Hospitals will formally honor Gage Award recipients at a luncheon on Thursday, June 15, during VITAL2023, the association’s annual conference. The association will create and play short, two-minute videos highlighting each winning project during the luncheon.
The association website and publications will highlight Gage Award recipients. Recipients often are invited to share their work in other venues, including association webinars.
Each category winner will receive a Gage Awards plaque, and all project team members will receive a certificate. Winners also will receive one complimentary registration to VITAL2023, and a $1,000 stipend to assist with travel arrangements.
Honorable Mentions will receive a Gage Awards plaque and one complimentary registration to VITAL2023, and all project team members will receive a certificate.
Gage Awards
Population Health
Winner
Harris Health System
Community Health Worker Visits for High-Risk Diabetes Patients
Winner
The MetroHealth System
Institute for H.O.P.E. School Health Program
Quality
Winner
Memorial Healthcare System
Keep Your Move in the Tube
Honorable Mention
Zuckerberg San Francisco General Hospital and Trauma Center
Social Medicine Program
Innovations
Harborview Medical Center, Seattle
Harborview Medical Center partnered with Public Health—Seattle & King County (PHSKC) to improve access to COVID-19 testing and vaccination for low-income and minority populations, people with limited English proficiency (LEP), and people experiencing homelessness. Harborview created mobile walk-up, no-cost testing and vaccination sites at locations that were easily accessible and trusted by at-risk communities, including churches, mosques, schools, housing units, homeless shelters, encampments, and food banks.
From April 2020 to March 2021, Harborview and PHSKC performed 21,758 COVID-19 tests at more than 50 sites. From February to October 2021, mobile outreach teams administered 9,457 vaccine doses at more than 97 locations; of those vaccinated, 70 percent identified as Black, indigenous, and people of color, one-third were from a LEP population, and 14 percent were housing insecure.
University Medical Center of El Paso, El Paso, Texas
Since December 2020, University Medical Center of El Paso has administered 327,000 COVID-19 vaccines through a central hub site, four neighborhood health clinics, a mobile health clinic, and two county jail facilities. UMC also staffed Texas’ first binational COVID-19 vaccine effort between El Paso and its sister city, Ciudad Juárez, Mexico, which had a 30 percent vaccination rate before the health system intervened.
As of November 29, 2021, 91.7 percent of community members 65 and older were fully vaccinated and 99.9 percent were partially vaccinated. As of early October, 75.8 percent of those 12 and older were fully vaccinated and 87.9 percent partially vaccinated, and 69.3 percent of those 5 and older were fully vaccinated and 84.7 percent partially vaccinated.
University of Texas Medical Branch, Galveston, Texas
To help physicians and patients interpret test results for SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, University of Texas Medical Branch (UTMB) pathology faculty in October 2020 developed a compendium of expert interpretive commentary and a supporting application that applies these comments to tests and delivers them to physicians and patients.
In 13 months, UTMB completed more than 325,000 test interpretations and monitored COVID-19 outcomes to assess whether better distribution of COVID-19 test results reduced diagnostic ambiguity and led to better outcomes. UTMB had:
- a mean length of stay of 6.5 days, compared with an 8.3-day regional average and 9.1-day national average;
- a 4.4 percent rate of escalation to the intensive care unit, compared with a 22.6 percent regional rate and 23.3 percent national rate; and
- a mortality rate of 7 percent, compared with a 10.1 percent regional rate and 12.7 percent national rate.
Questions?
Contact us at events@essentialhospitals.org
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