Illinois Hospital Association

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Talking Points on Patient Safety
 The following talking points may be useful if conversations with outside groups evolve into discussions on patient safety generally.

Hospitals believe that even the smallest amount of patient harm attributable to preventable error is too much, and should be identified and corrected.

Hospitals already comply with a myriad of federal (Medicare, OSHA, FDA) and state (Medicaid, IDPH, licensing boards) regulatory mandates related to quality of care and patient safety.

  • 94% of Illinois hospitals participate in a Medicare program that mandates a triennial audit of all aspects of health care delivery affecting patient care by The Joint Commission.
  • 43% of The Joint Commission's performance standards are directly related to patient safety. An additional 35% are indirectly related to patient safety.
Hospitals utilize a number of internal committees and programs to promote health care assessment and quality improvement initiatives, e.g., pharmacy and therapeutics committees, safety committees, and discharge rounds.

Working in partnership with the Illinois Department of Public Health and other state agencies, Illinois hospitals have consistently improved quality of care in several areas, including emergency medicine, emergency medical services for children, perinatal health care, and newborn hearing screening. For example, each level of perinatal care must meet the perinatal network’s continuous quality improvement (CQI) requirements.

98% of all Illinois hospitals are participating in one or more of the Illinois Peer Review Organization’s (PRO) quality improvement projects. Hospitals have already made notable progress since the PRO’s 1998 baseline study.

Since implementation of the Joint Commission’s sentinel event policy in Jan. 1996, hospitals have been participating in root-cause analysis of serious injuries or deaths caused by medical management. Information has been reported in published Sentinel Event Alerts to help deter repeated incidents of error. All Joint Commission survey results are available to the public by calling the Joint Commission (630-792-5800) or visiting its web site (http://www.jointcommission.org).