A symposium created to advance medical practices that improve health care quality, safety and affordability.

WHAT: 
The Architecture of High Value Healthcare National Conference is an annual event that features a series of presentations from academic medical centers across the United States and workshops on various topics related to improving health care quality, efficiency, safety and affordability — also known as high value health care.

WHY:    
Johns Hopkins Medicine and the High Value Practice Academic Alliance acknowledge the need to improve the quality, efficiency and affordability of clinical practices by collaboratively developing strategies to avoid unnecessary testing, treatments and procedures on a national scale.

WHEN: 
Friday, Sept. 21, from 8 a.m.–8 p.m.
Saturday, Sept. 22, from 8 a.m.–6:30 p.m.
Sunday, Sept. 23, from 8 a.m.–2:30 p.m.

(Doors open at 6:30 a.m. for coffee and registration. Program begins promptly at 7:45 a.m.)         

WHERE: 
Baltimore Convention Center
1 W. Pratt St., Baltimore, MD 21201

WHO:  
The Health Research and Educational Trust of the American Hospital Association has partnered with Johns Hopkins Medicine and the High Value Practice Academic Alliance this year to co-direct the conference and disseminate best practices across their network of hospitals.

Speakers will include:

Martin Makary, M.D., M.P.H., a surgical oncologist and chief of the Johns Hopkins Islet Transplant Center, will conduct a workshop in room 308 about the best practices of opioid prescribing, based on his research on opioid prescribing guidelines for 100 common surgical procedures reviewed by a panel of experts and patients that led to new suggestions to address the opioid epidemic. 

Steven Frank, M.D., an associate professor of anesthesiology and critical care medicine at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, will deliver an invited lecture and direct a workshop about how patients do just as well when given less blood, and avoid risks associated with transfusions, after guidelines changed from routinely administering two blood units to now one.

Pamela Johnson, M.D., founder and director of the High Value Practice Academic Alliance and associate professor of radiology at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, will discuss the importance of evidence-based decision making when ordering pulmonary computed tomography (CT) angiography (CTA), to ensure that patients with pulmonary embolism are diagnosed and managed swiftly, and that patients with a low likelihood of pulmonary embolism do not undergo unnecessary CT imaging. 

Brandyn Lau, M.P.H., an assistant professor of radiology and radiological science and health sciences informatics at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, will present mandatory clinical decision support tools and individualized performance feedback to prescribers that will help improve venous thromboembolism (VTE) prevention practices and reduce preventable harm using risk-appropriate VTE prophylaxis

Funding for this conference was made possible in part by grant number 1R13HS026350-01 from the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality. The views expressed in written conference materials or publications and by speakers and moderators do not necessarily reflect the official policies of the Department of Health and Human Services; nor does mention of trade names, commercial practices or organizations imply endorsement by the U.S. government.