2025 marks the eighth year of the UT-HIP Quality Collaborative, a systemwide consortium of Chief Quality Officers and clinical quality leaders representing the eight affiliated medical institutions across the UT System. The Collaborative convenes every two weeks to review performance, identify shared opportunities for improvement, and align strategies using Vizient Quality and Accountability data and benchmarking tools.
One of the priority areas for 2025 is the prevention of hypoglycemia related to insulin administration, a high-impact patient safety focus due to its preventability and clinical risk. The issue was initially elevated during the Collaborative’s 2022 SafetyPLUS initiative, which examined critical safety opportunities across the enterprise. Since then, institutions have engaged in comparative analytics, shared surveys, and expert presentations to accelerate progress and standardize best practices.
Across UT System hospitals, aligned interventions include:
- Standardized insulin protocols and conservative dose adjustments for high-risk or NPO patients
- Coordination of insulin timing with nutritional intake and meal delivery
- EMR-driven clinical decision support alerts for early detection and response
- Strengthened nurse–pharmacy communication workflows for escalation and dose clarification
- Interdisciplinary reviews of hypoglycemia events using human-factors principles
Common contributors to hypoglycemia — such as interrupted nutrition, NPO status, and insulin timing variability — remain a focal point for targeted improvement. Continuous monitoring, timely documentation, and ongoing staff education are essential components of this systemwide strategy.
By aligning evidence-based interventions and analytics-driven oversight, the UT-HIP Quality Collaborative continues to advance safer and more consistent glycemic management practices for patients across Texas.
