Frequently Asked Questions
Q. What is the Advocate Health Touchstone Award Sharing Day event and Touchstone Award program?
A. Advocate Health Touchstone Award Sharing Day is an annual virtual event hosted October 21, 2026, recognizing individual and group efforts exhibiting exceptional performance in the areas of safety, health outcomes and experience. An integral part of the event is the Touchstone Awards program, honoring projects for their demonstration of evidence-based practices and achievements.
Q. What kind of projects are submitted for a Touchstone Award application?
A. Projects must demonstrate the use of an improvement process along with quantifiable results, with focus on innovation and knowledge spreading. These projects can range from widespread, multi-site improvements to very local, unit-specific improvements, spotlighting exceptional efforts to improve care delivery in the following areas:
Safety: Process improvements such as high reliability, HACs, infection prevention, medication reconciliation, teammate safety, error and rework prevention, risk reduction and preparedness, strengthening data privacy, etc.
Health Outcomes: Successful, evidence-based or innovative practices that positively impact health outcomes such as mortality rates, core measures, readmissions, diabetes, etc. as well as care coordination, patient access and engagement, etc.
Experience: Significant achievements related to patient and medical staff satisfaction scores, teammate engagement scores, including efforts aimed at communication, transparency, workplace wellbeing, etc.
The project work should be a recent project with a majority of the work concentrated in the last 24 months.
Q. Where can I submit a Touchstone Award application?
A. Application submissions open on March 31, 2026 and can be submitted through our event website here.
Q. What resources or support will be available to teams working on their Touchstone Award applications?
A. Reach out to Experience, Quality or Safety teammates within your organization for assistance when writing your Touchstone Award application.
Q. Are there specific criteria or guidelines for selecting the Touchstone Award honorees?
A. The Touchstone Award application outlines points available for each section of the submission. The quality and comprehensive coverage of each section is reviewed and scored by three judges. Projects selected as Touchstone Award winners, and thus featured during Sharing Day, are the overall highest scoring projects.
Q. Is there a page limit for the submission?
A. Your submission should be no more than 7 pages in total, that includes the following:
- Cover Sheet – One page
- Detailed Project Summary – Four pages maximum, text description of the project
- Data & Graph Appendix – Two pages maximum, graphs and visuals with captions
Any submissions over the 7-page maximum will be disqualified.
Q. Can you share examples of Touchstone applications from previous winners?
A. The following are examples from previous 2024 Gold level winners:
- Sustained Reduction in Prolonged Ventilation after Isolated CABG Following Multidisciplinary Improvements Across All Phases of Care
- Asking the Tough Questions to Mitigate Child Hunger: Food Insecurity Screening in Pediatric Primary Care
- Implementation of a Standardized Inpatient Virtual Consult Platform within the Atrium Health North Central and Western Market
- Optimizing Primary Care Wellness Visits
Q. How many Touchstone Award winners will be selected? Are there different categories?
A. There will be multiple honorees per category depending on the number of qualified applications. On average, there are usually 60 projects awarded: 10 gold; 20 silver; 30 bronze.
Q. Are sites or locations limited in the number of submissions?
A. Sites and locations can submit as many applications as they would like.
Q. When will Touchstone Award honorees be selected?
A. Honorees will be selected and notified in August.
Q. If my project has won an award before, can I submit again with an additional year of data?
A. Applications of previous Touchstone award winning projects are not eligible for submission. However, we would love to feature your continued sustainment in our Sustainment Spotlight. Please directly email Donelle.Wilkin@aah.org for details.
Q. What if my submission wins a Touchstone Award but I am unable to attend the Sharing Day virtual event?
A. If you are unable to attend you can designate someone to present on your behalf.
Q. Who is invited to attend the event? Is there a fee to attend?
A. All teammates across the enterprise are invited to attend the virtual event, including frontline staff, physicians and APPs, leadership and corporate areas. There is no fee to attend.
Q. Who will present during the event?
A. Touchstone Award honorees are asked to present their projects throughout the day.
Gold Touchstone honorees will share a presentation highlighting their project evidence-based practices and successful results.
Silver Touchstone honorees will present a poster highlighting their projects.
Bronze Touchstone honorees will provide a one-page document summarizing their project.
Q. Will there be a keynote speaker?
A. Yes. We will host a keynote speaker during the midday portion of the event.
For more information, contact Ulrika.White@advocatehealth.org.