Call for Abstracts

VA's Health Services Research and Development Service (HSR&D) will conduct their Quality Enhancement Research Initiative (QUERI) National Meeting from December 10-12, 2008 at the Hyatt Regency hotel in Phoenix, AZ. The theme for this year's meeting is "Connecting Research and Patient Care." The meeting will include plenary presentations, poster sessions, and workshops which focus on the vital connection between research and operations to facilitate the implementation of interventions that improve the quality of veterans' healthcare.

QUERI investigators, HSR&D researchers, and other VA staff who are involved in implementing or studying interventions to improve health care are invited to submit abstracts for either Workshop or Poster presentations that address:

Research findings of interest to implementation researchers, operations or clinical staff;

Cross-cutting issues in research, policy and practice; and

Case studies and/or best practices (e.g., lessons learned) that illustrate success or obstacles in collaboration between research and operations.

While topics do not need to fall under the following categories, we're especially interested in workshop abstracts that address the following issues —

Organizational readiness for change/managing change.
Moving from evidence-based research to implementation tools: quality indicators, clinical practice guidelines, reminders.
Spread and sustainability of evidence-based interventions.
Data and informatics.
HIT issues in implementation: My HealtheVet, secure messaging, CPRS, etc.
Cooperative studies and central IRB: Implications for QUERI.
Performance measurement: What OQP can learn from QUERI and vice versa.
Making economic analyses of QUERI projects more relevant for VA decision-makers.
Complex patients (e.g., comorbidity): Implications for QUERI, OQP, and PCS.
Cross-cutting QUERI issues relevant to clinical services, e.g., patient self-management, transitions in care, etc.
Provider education as a tool to implementation/ Connections to EES.
Opportunities to expand collaboration with new partners in Nursing Services or Patient Care Services.

WORKSHOP SESSIONS
Workshops must be targeted at an audience that includes both researchers and operations staff. Each workshop should include both presentations about a specific QUERI process or clinical issue – and a discussion of implications for QUERI and QUERI/operations collaborations. Workshop submissions that include both researchers and operations staff as faculty are encouraged. Goals of workshops are to identify areas for future research or partnerships and to improve participants' knowledge or skills. There will be two sources of workshop sessions: invited sessions and those competitively selected from abstracts submitted for the meeting.

POSTER SESSIONS
The poster session is a display presentation that the investigator will personally accompany for an assigned period of time (two hours). The display reports current research results that can be readily summarized in graphic form: tables, graphs, pictures, etc.

Abstract submissions must be received no later than 11:59pm, PST on Friday, July 18, 2008.

Abstracts with the highest average scores and greatest relevance to the meeting theme will be selected. All decisions regarding abstract acceptance/rejection will be made by the Review Committee and will be final. Authors will be notified of decisions by Friday, August 15th, 2008.

Call For Abstracts

Abstracts are due Friday, July 18, 2008