Story Ideas for Media 3/26/12

News

Spring Quarter 2012.Spring quarter begins today on the Columbus campus, the last quarter of classes on the academic calendar. The university will begin its conversion to a semester schedule with the launch of summer semester on June 18. CONTACT: Liz Cook at (614) 292-7276.

Ohio State honored for student volunteer and service. Last year, nearly 25,000 Ohio State students gave 756,130 hours in service to the community – earning the university a spot on the 2012 President’s Higher Education Community Service Honor Roll with Distinction.
The Corporation for National and Community Service this year named more than 600 institutions of higher education to the list for their commitment and achievement in community service, with 110 achieving the Honor Roll with Distinction, including six in Ohio.
This is the fourth year that Ohio State has achieved the Honor Roll with Distinction, with students working on issues from health care access and student philanthropy to supporting at-risk youth. In 2010, Ohio State students engaged in 638,112 hours of service. The 20 percent increase in service hours over last year matches a national trend of the growing interest by colleges and universities in highlighting their efforts to engage students in making a difference in the community. SEE: http://www.learnandserve.gov/about/programs/higher_ed_honoroll.asp CONTACT: Ben Lewis (614) 247-7100.

O-H-I-O Site reaches 10,000 photos. Ohio State has now received more than 10,000 submissions of O-H-I-O photos. To celebrate the milestone, a commemorative poster has been created by the university and team of students. Scott Denison, a Master of Fine Arts candidate, led the project with seven undergraduate students from his fall design course. Students, faculty, staff and fans may pick up a free poster, while supplies last, at the Alumni Association Office located on the first floor of the Ohio Union, 1739 N. High Street. SEE: osu.edu/O-H-I-O/. CONTACT: Scott Denison, denison.17@osu.edu or Ted Hattemer, Senior Director, University Marketing Communications, hattemer.1@osu.edu

Research

Ohio State study: In hospitals, a tradeoff between better clinical quality and a good patient experience. Hospitals that adopt strategies to reduce errors and meet government requirements face an initial tradeoff between improved clinical quality and a decline in the quality of individual patients' experiences, according to new research.
Quality process management, a practice associated with the private sector, is becoming more common in hospitals as they set up operating systems in response to federal and state mandates to reduce medical errors and improve patient safety, the researchers say. The researchers weren't surprised to find that the implementation of these techniques led to improved clinical outcomes. But finding that these improvements sometimes came at the expense of the quality of the patient experience was unexpected.
“Clinical quality is about doing things correctly - strict guidelines, standardization and checklists, for example - so when you consider experiential quality is about customizing health-care delivery to an individual patient's needs, there is a tension there,” said Aravind Chandrasekaran, assistant professor of management sciences at Ohio State and lead author of the study. SEE:http://researchnews.osu.edu/archive/hospitalproc.htm CONTACT: Emily Caldwell,(614) 292-8310; caldwell.151@osu.edu

The person listed as the CONTACT will have the most current information about the story. Call on our media relations staff for help with any Ohio State story: Liz Cook, (614) 292-7276 or cook.17@osu.edu; Shelly Hoffman, (614) 247-4748 or hoffman.511@osu.edu; Jim Lynch, (614) 247-4110 or lynch.270@osu.edu; or Amy Murray, (614) 292-8385 or murray-goedde.1@osu.edu