VCSQI Winter Quarterly Meeting Recap
- Sherri White
- 4 days ago
- 6 min read
A Night of Storytelling, Data, and Heartfelt Perspective
The 2025 VCSQI Winter Quarterly Meeting brought together members and affiliates from across Virginia and beyond for an evening that blended celebration, storytelling, quality improvement insights, and new data from across the collaborative. The focus of the night: elevating the patient voice while sharing meaningful progress across our programs.
Eddie Fonner, VCSQI Executive Director, opened the session by welcoming members and acknowledging the start of the holiday season. He reminded us that our mission is rooted in the cardiac patients we serve—and that this meeting was designed to highlight their experiences and the work being done statewide to improve outcomes.
He previewed a robust agenda that included:
A patient and family panel
A spotlight presentation highlighting a member’s quality improvement initiative
The latest VCSQI Data Warehouse outcomes and trends
Sherri White, Chief of Operations & Quality, introduced the evening’s central feature, the Bridging the Gap session—an initiative launched last year by the VCSQI DEI 2.0 Workgroup to bring forward authentic patient and family narratives. This year’s spotlight featured two couples deeply connected to VCSQI whose spouses recently became cardiac surgery patients.
FEATURED PATIENT PANEL: BRIDGING THE GAP
Melanie & Tim Johnson (Carilion Clinic)
The Johnsons shared a powerful story of unexpected cardiac disease, emergency intervention, and a challenging recovery that reshaped their understanding of care delivery.
Key reflections included:
Recognizing subtle symptoms that escalated unexpectedly
The emotional shift from caregiver/clinician to spouse/family member
Extended ICU needs, atrial flutter, and the complexity of recovery
The vital role of cardiac rehabilitation—particularly in rebuilding patient confidence
Judy & Frank Smith (UVA Health)
The Smiths offered a candid account of misdiagnosed symptoms, rapid deterioration, and lifesaving surgery.
Their story illustrated:
How easily cardiac symptoms can be misinterpreted
The caregiver’s emotional toll, even for experienced ICU nurses
Powerful gratitude for surgical care, nursing support, and the UVA team
Both couples emphasized how different the world looks when you move from being part of the care team to being the family sitting at the bedside.
During the Q&A Session, Dr. Jeffrey Rich (VCSQI Board Member) opened a deeply human conversation about what patients feel before surgery, during anesthesia, and in the hours after waking.
Themes emerged around:
Fear, uncertainty, and the need for reassurance
The importance of including families as part of the care team
Variation in emotional responses during recovery
The importance of compassion, clarity, and presence from staff
Cindi Cole (Centra Lynchburg & Board Member) shared reflections from her clinical background and highlighted the reinstatement of the pre-operative cardiac surgery class at Lynchburg General—a program shown to improve preparedness and confidence for patients and families. She expressed interest in presenting this initiative at a future meeting.
Call for Patient Story Submissions — 2026 Winter Quarterly Meeting
VCSQI is seeking patient partners to share their experiences at the Winter Quarterly Meeting scheduled for December 3 ,2026. We are looking for stories that offer meaningful insight into the patient journey—both where challenges occurred and where operational approaches contributed to improved outcomes.
What We’re Seeking
Patient (or caregiver) experiences that:
Identify barriers to care, including complications, follow-up challenges, discharge issues, or communication gaps
Highlight operational strategies or processes that worked well and supported recovery or safety
Provide practical lessons that align with VCSQI’s mission of improving cardiac care statewide
Ideal Participants
Individuals who experienced a complication or a notable point of success and are comfortable sharing their story in a structured, moderated session.
Participation Includes
A brief pre-meeting discussion with VCSQI staff
A short summary of their experience
Participation in a patient panel during the Winter Quarterly Meeting
If your organization has a patient whose story can inform improvement efforts or showcase effective practices, please share their name and a brief description with the VCSQI team via Info@VCSQI.org.
Board Updates from Dr. Robert Lancey
Dr. Robert Lancey, Chair of the VCSQI Board of Directors, provided key updates and a summary of the group's accomplishments this year. He highlighted ongoing work to expand statewide collaboration and strengthen member engagement across specialized areas of cardiac care.
A major announcement was the launch of the new ECMO Workgroup, which will convene for the first time in person at the March 2026 quarterly meeting. This group was created in response to growing interest across the collaborative in standardizing ECMO practice, developing shared protocols, and improving clinical consistency statewide. Dr. Lancey encouraged members to join and noted this effort is anticipated to become one of the most significant initiatives of the coming year.
Dr. Lancey also expressed appreciation for the continued leadership and commitment shown by members across all VCSQI sites and emphasized the importance of sustaining momentum as new programs and quality initiatives take shape in 2026.
Call for Nominations — Collaborator of the Year 2025
VCSQI is now accepting nominations for the 2025 Collaborator of the Year Award. This award recognizes individuals or institutions who have made meaningful contributions within VCSQI—advancing shared learning, strengthening partnerships, and driving measurable improvement in cardiac care through their engagement in the collaborative.
Nominations should reflect contributions that are directly connected to VCSQI activities, initiatives, workgroups, or collaborative efforts.
All nominees will be recognized, and one award recipient will be selected and honored at the VCSQI Spring Quarterly Meeting.
Help us highlight the members whose collaboration is actively shaping better cardiac care across Virginia.
QUALITY IMPROVEMENT SPOTLIGHT
This quarter’s Quality Spotlight featured two experienced UVA Health leaders—Robbin Shifflett, RN, Nurse Manager for Cardiovascular Surgery, and Judy Smith, RN, Clinical Nurse Specialist and VCSQI Quality Committee Champion—who presented UVA’s ongoing work to reduce cardiac surgery readmissions.
More than a decade ago, UVA identified an increasing readmission rate among cardiac surgery patients discharged to home. Robbin shared how this prompted the creation of a comprehensive, data-informed approach to identify high-risk patients earlier and intervene more effectively. Their team developed a risk assessment tool incorporating social drivers, postoperative complications, length of stay factors, and refusal of care. High-risk patients now receive intensified follow-up, including more frequent phone check-ins and clinic visits within the first week when possible.
Robbin and Judy also discussed the development of a readmission questionnaire designed to capture the patient’s own explanation for why they returned. This patient-centered lens uncovered previously invisible barriers—such as lack of transportation or pharmacy access—that directly contributed to preventable readmissions. One early case led to a major system change: the implementation of meds-to-beds, ensuring medications are delivered at the bedside before discharge.
Judy added important context about the challenges of abstracting readmission data across systems and highlighted how even small workflow changes can improve continuity, safety, and patient support. Together, their presentation underscored the value of combining structured risk identification with authentic patient storytelling to drive meaningful reductions in readmissions.
Statewide Performance Metrics Review
Eddie Fonner, VCSQI Executive Director and Chief of Data Science, provided a focused overview of key statewide performance indicators drawn from the VCSQI Data Warehouse, highlighting metrics that reflect both system-wide strengths and opportunities for targeted improvement. His review included four primary areas:
Median First Medical Contact–to–Device Time for STEMI Procedures (Q3 2024–Q2 2025)
Results across 1,413 cases showed strong performance, with most hospitals clustered near or below the VCSQI median of 73.0 minutes, demonstrating consistent responsiveness across the collaborative.
Cardiac Rehabilitation Referral Rates for All PCI Procedures
Eddie noted meaningful variation among sites but emphasized that the collaborative achieved an impressive 91.5% referral rate, exceeding the ACC benchmark of 79.7% and underscoring a strong commitment to secondary prevention.
30-Day Readmissions for Isolated CABG
Review of this data highlighted the distribution of low and high performers, offering clear opportunities to learn from sites demonstrating sustained reductions in readmissions.
KCCQ Quality-of-Life Scores for All TAVR Procedures
Eddie presented stable statewide outcomes and highlighted a 19% increase in reported QoL, reinforcing the value of post-procedure follow-up and patient engagement.
In addition to reviewing these metrics, Eddie also provided guidance on how members can access and interpret their data. He walked through the reporting platform interface, demonstrating where to find:
Institutional and comparative dashboards
Detailed quality and outcomes reports
Metric definitions and drilldown tools
Time-trend visualizations for performance monitoring
Filters for procedure type, timeframe, and comparison groups
He emphasized the importance of routine data review to support pathway refinement, identify outliers, and inform quality-improvement priorities at the hospital and collaborative levels.
These combined insights underscore VCSQI’s commitment to data transparency, benchmarking, and shared learning as essential drivers of improved cardiac care across Virginia.
The Winter Quarterly Meeting underscored the deeply human impact of our collective work. The patient panel offered a powerful look into the emotional and clinical realities of cardiac care, while the data and quality updates grounded us in the measurable progress we are achieving together.
VCSQI extends sincere gratitude to:
The Johnson and Smith families for courageously sharing their experiences
Robbin Shifflett, Judy Smith, and the UVA Health team for contributing their expertise and advancing statewide learning
All members across the collaborative who work each day to improve outcomes for cardiac patients in Virginia
The Winter Meeting served as a reminder that behind every cardiac registry metric, every reduction in length of stay, and every process improvement lies a real human story. Through authentic patient and family voices, we deepened our understanding of how our work extends far beyond the walls of our hospitals.
To the Johnsons, the Smiths, Robbin Shifflett, and all who participated—thank you for your openness, your leadership, and your unwavering commitment to improving cardiac care across Virginia.
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