John D. Thompson Award

Please read the award guidelines below. Click here to access the entry form. You must log in to your CHA account to access the form.

The Connecticut Hospital Association’s (CHA) Connecticut Healthcare Research and Education Foundation (CHREF) is pleased to invite CHA members to submit entries for the prestigious 2027 John D. Thompson Award for Excellence in the Delivery of Healthcare Through the Use of Data.

Since 1994, this award has been given to one hospital each year to honor the contributions made by John D. Thompson to healthcare administration and patient care quality during his career. Dr. Thompson was a professor at Yale’s Schools of Nursing, Medicine, and Public Health, known for his advocacy of using quantitative data in health policy formulation, and specifically his role in the development of DRGs for hospital reimbursement.

To enter, please share details of how you have achieved excellence in patient care through the use of data, as demonstrated by the improvement of internal operations, procedures, and outcomes. All entries will be blinded and judged by a five-member committee comprising representatives from various organizations with an interest in healthcare quality.

Each entry must comprise the following:

• The name, title, address, telephone number, and email address of the project’s contact person
• A one-line description of the program or service
• A description, in 1,800 words or fewer, outlining the program or service using the six criteria below to organize your entry

Criteria for the Award

1. Describe how your hospital has successfully improved patient care due to a modification in process as substantiated through the use of data.
2. Explain the impetus for the initiation of this specific project.
3. Explain how this specific project is aligned with your hospital’s organizational goals for quality.
4. Define the measures of patient care and operations/procedures used and monitored regularly.
5. Explain the “old” operations, procedures, and results (outcomes) achieved. Describe the “new” operations and procedures, providing comparative results achieved through the use of these new measures for monitoring and feedback.
6. These improvements must be demonstrated through the use of CHA’s ChimeData or other objective state or national data sets. This cannot be internal data alone. If you report internal data to an external government entity, you may use the externally reported data to meet this requirement. Please indicate to what entity you report such data and provide data that substantiates improvements. Graphs/diagrams and Continuous Quality Improvement tools such as flow charts and/or cause and effect diagrams may be used as supporting documentation to illustrate the project. Graphs or diagrams may be in color or in black and white. Materials should not exceed three pages in a PDF file.

Award Entry Guidelines

Each hospital and/or health system is eligible to submit multiple entries, and joint entries are also encouraged.

The total word count of your entire submission should not exceed 1,800 words, not including contact information and the one-line program description. Supporting materials should not exceed three pages in a PDF file.

Note: There is a two-year period of ineligibility for previous John D. Thompson Award winners.

To ensure judging impartiality, all entries must be submitted without any reference to the hospital’s name or location (name and location should only appear in the designated fields).

Entry Deadline

The award entry deadline is Wednesday, January 13, 2027.

Click here to access the entry form. You must log in to your CHA account to access the form.