Harkness Project: Are There Lessons to be Learned from the Transformation of the Veterans Health Administration for the Quality Agenda for the NHS in England?

Mentors: Carolyn Clancy, M.D., and Daniel Stryer, M.D., AHRQ, and Sheila Leatherman, United HealthCare Corporation/University of Cambridge

Host Institution: Agency for Health Care Research and Quality and the University of North Carolina

Biography at time of Harkness Fellowship: Kathryn Rowan, D.Phil., is a health services researcher who, in 1994 as a result of her Ph.D. at the University of Oxford, established a charity (not-for-profit organization) called the Intensive Care National Audit & Research Centre (ICNARC). Rowan established ICNARC (www.icnarc.org) as a sister organization to the Intensive Care Society (the professional organization for clinicians working in U.K. critical care). ICNARC's aim is to achieve improvements in the organization and practice of critical care (intensive and high dependency care) through a broad program of comparative audit, methodological and evaluative research. Rowan is the Director of ICNARC and leads a team of fifteen to twenty audit, research, IT and administrative staff. In 2004, she was awarded the Humphry Davy Medal by the Royal College of Anaesthetists in the U.K. as a mark of distinction for her significant contribution to the College and to critical care.

Project: Rowan’s project aimed at investigating the transformation of the Veterans Health Administration (VHA) in the mid-1990s, how and why it happened, the sustainability of the changes, and the evidence on its impact on care quality.  She completed a literature review on the transformation and on quality in the VHA, and carried out interviews with key informants, including VHA staff. 

E-Mail: Kathy_rowan@hotmail.com

Career Activity Since Fellowship

• Honorary Professor, Division of Research Strategy, University College London, 2010
• Honorary Professor, Health Services Research Unit, Faculty of Public Health & Policy, London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, 2008
• Member, Steering Group, Patient Safety Observatory report, National Patient Safety Agency, 2007