HIMSS, NAHQ and IHE Join the UNIVANTS of Healthcare Excellence™ Award Partners

Collaboration award recognising unity and change in healthcare is now accepting submissions for 2019

Abbott announced the three final founding partners for the UNIVANTS of Healthcare Excellence™ Award: Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society (HIMSS), the National Association for Healthcare Quality (NAHQ), and the Institute of Health Economics (IHE). The award will recognise global cross-discipline care teams changing the healthcare industry in innovative ways for patients, clinicians, payors and healthcare institutions.

The UNIVANTS of Healthcare Excellence award, named through a combination of unity and the avant-garde, is a joint collaboration between Abbott, the International Federation of Clinical Chemistry and Laboratory Medicine (IFCC), AACC, European Health Management Association (EHMA), Modern Healthcare, Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society (HIMSS), the National Association for Healthcare Quality (NAHQ), and the Institute of Health Economics (IHE).

"The most successful health systems of the future will be those with teams willing to rethink and offer additional ways they can support and help drive positive care outcomes," said Brian Blaser, executive vice president, Diagnostic Products, Abbott. "UNIVANTS of Healthcare Excellence can help inspire that kind of forward thinking and drive us toward measurably better healthcare."

The UNIVANTS of Healthcare Excellence Award celebrates integrated clinical care teams that are working together to achieve common goals. These "Unifiers" have stepped up to drive collaboration and truly persevered as a cross-disciplinary team.

In addition, winning teams will be:

• Avant-Garde in their approach to solving problems
• Using lab intelligence to achieve measurably better outcomes
• Transforming healthcare delivery with measurable impact to patients, clinicians, payors and entire health systems

"By leveraging the power of information and technology, the winners of this award will shine a spotlight on great examples of transformation that cut across the health silos," said Hal Wolf, President & CEO, HIMSS. "We are excited to join this prestigious group of global organisations who are working together to achieve this goal."

"Partnering for the UNIVANTS of Healthcare Excellence Award is a natural fit with our mission of preparing the competent and coordinated workforce required to advance quality across the healthcare continuum," said Stephanie Mercado, Executive Director & CEO, NAHQ. "We look forward to the opportunity to unify across healthcare specialties to improve healthcare around the world."

"The Institute of Health Economics is pleased to be part of a program which will highlight and profile some of the best international team-based practices to improve the quality and sustainability of health systems," said Dr. Christopher McCabe, Executive Director and CEO of the Institute of Health Economics. "Our organisation is driven by creating value through collaboration, which includes sharing best practices."

The awards are open to all healthcare professionals and teams regardless of affiliation with Abbott. All partners, excluding Abbott, will evaluate submissions to determine the 2019 winners. Applications are due March 31, 2019, and the inaugural winners will be announced in July 2019.

For more information on the 2019 UNIVANTS of Healthcare Excellence Awards and for the award application, visit UnivantsHCE.com.