"QTN is more than just professionals working on specific problems," says Matthew Niedner, MD, director of quality and patient safety of the PICU at the University of Michigan C.S.
Further, the member units have applied the QTN ethos--procedures, practices, approaches, and a general improvement-oriented mindset--to a wide arena of practices and care delivery.
The transparency principle of QTN "has increased the comfort level of showing others your defects to help fix them, instead of hiding them," Niedner says.
"One of the most valuable things about QTN was seeing how we measure up," says Jeanine Graf, MD, medical director of the PICU at Texas Children's Hospital in Houston, where infections decreased by more than half in 24 months.
Otwell Timmons, MD, pediatric intensivist at Levine Children's Hospital at Carolinas Medical Center in Charlotte, NC, explains he is "particularly grateful to QTN for the belief--backed by examples--that you can keep lowering your rate and not rest on your laurels.
March 7, 2006 QTN founder Frank Olsen is pushed out as CEO; Asian entrepreneur Lloyd Fan takes over,
May 25, 2006 Saying QTN was unable to obtain new funding, Fan announces the network has filed for bankruptcy.
QTN also offers a weekly talk show, Women on Women, which features commentary on issues important to queer women.
The mood of the evening can be summed up by one moment: As Orozco stood on the karaoke stage to welcome the crowd, sprinkled with a few real-deal bikers looking rather perplexed by their surroundings, a member of the QTN group asked aloud, to much nervous laughter, "Do you cash unemployment checks?"
According to several sources, QTN executives had initially planned to mount two hours of contractually required live programming themselves, only to realize they lacked the technical know-how.
"I pretty much washed my hands of [the network]," says Vanessa Meyer, a playback operator at QTN, with a bitter laugh.
An independently funded gay cable network--currently available in just 3 million homes, mostly in urban areas--may seem like an inherently risky venture, but to a person, employees said they were absolutely stunned by how quickly things at QTN have deteriorated.