HOMERuN’s Origins

Started as a casual conversation, Peter Lindenauer and Andrew Auerbach observed that Hospitalists lacked a national organization for quality improvement and health care innovation, similar to our colleagues in Neonatology or Surgery. They realized that a broad-based learning collaborative was essential for hospital medicine, and they shared a passion about making this a reality.

HOMERuN hit the ground running — doing seminal work on preventing hospital readmissions, engaging patients to understand how to improve transitions of care, studying the utility of lab testing in pneumonia, and examining whether VIPs (very important persons) are afforded a different level of care when hospitalized.

With support from the Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute (PCORnet) and a number of Clinical Data Research Networks and Patient Powered Research Networks, HOMERuN launched a period of rapid growth, and is now a Cooperative Research Group (CRG).

Recently, HOMERuN has begun work on an AHRQ-funded research project called the Utility of Predictive Systems in Diagnostic Errors — or UPSIDE. UPSIDE will provide foundational research for the development of interventions to reduce diagnostic errors, including predictive tools, targets for intervention, and a methodology for outcome assessment. During the COVID-19 pandemic, we have launched a response to gather and share information, and to identify needs that are critical during the outbreak.