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Hospital Talking Points
November 2005 marked the sixth anniversary of the Institute of Medicine's (IOM) report on patient safety, To Err is Human: Building a Safer Health System. The report cited statistics indicating that medical mistakes are the 8th leading cause of death, which garnered much attention then and continues to capture news headlines now. Outlining a comprehensive strategy where government, health care providers, industry and consumers can work together to reduce preventable medical errors, the report set a goal of 50 percent reduction in errors over five years.
This anniversary is bringing renewed public attention to patient safety. Your organization may be contacted to comment on this important issue. The following talking points may be useful if you or others in your organization are approached by the news media about patient safety.
- Be prepared to tell your organization's story. The staff member who manages your patient safety and quality programs may be an appropriate spokesperson.
- Describe new safety initiatives your organization has introduced, quality improvements, patient and medication safety programs, and similar activities.
- Provide examples of resources your organization has developed and provided to employees and patients to facilitate system-wide improvements and to promote a culture of safety.
- Share data your organization has collected and analyzed that demonstrate areas where quality and safety improvements have been made.
- If your organization has been involved in a safety concern in the past, be prepared to answer specific questions about the changes your organization has put into place.
Some major themes may also be helpful when preparing for potential media inquiries. They can be adapted to your organization:
- Illinois hospitals are dedicated to improving patient care. Hospitals and health care organizations have taken important steps to ensure a better understanding of how errors occur and have implemented preventive measures so they won't happen again. Reducing patient care errors is an ongoing, long-term process, and you can provide details about the steps your hospital has taken to do so.
- Hospitals are working closely with governmental, managed care and other organizations to develop indicators and measures that reflect hospital performance in quality and patient safety that will soon be publicly available (e.g., IDPH, CMS, AHRQ, NQF).
- Hospitals comply with numerous federal and state governmental regulatory mandates as well as non-governmental efforts related to quality of care and patient safety, for example:
- Hospitals are implementing the Joint Commission's National Patient Safety Goals and the National Quality Forum's Safe Practices for Better Health Care. (Be prepared to give examples of what your hospital is doing to implement these goals and practices.)
- Since the release of the 1999 IOM report, hospitals have strived to create a culture of safety that encourages health care workers to share information when mistakes occur.
Sharing information allows physicians, nurses and other caregivers to learn from the errors and work toward reducing them. Provide the media examples as to how your organization is working to create a culture of safety.
- Hospitals are partnering with IDPH and representatives from across the health care community in Illinois on the Hospital Report Card Act.
The Act will provide the public with meaningful and useful information about nurse staffing and clinical outcome data. It is another important step in showing the public that hospitals are committed to improving patient safety.
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Hospitals are partnering with IDPH on the new Adverse Event Reporting Law of
2005. By 2008, hospitals and ambulatory surgical treatment centers in
Illinois will report certain serious adverse health care events to IDPH as well
as conduct root cause analyses of adverse events and implement corrective action
plans. The new process is aimed at quality improvement and accountability for
public health via a prevention and cooperation approach.
- IHA and IDPH
are part of a national program, called the Patient Safety Improvement Corps.
The program is an initiative of the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality
and the Veterans Administration, to work on establishing voluntary and mandatory
error reporting initiatives and safety interventions.
- Highly trained professionals manage the health care industry, but it is an industry where people take care of people.
Some degree of human error is inevitable. Health care professionals attempt to reduce the risk as much as possible, and constantly strive to improve patient safety. Provide examples of safeguards your hospital has developed to improve safety. Include any outside quality organizations your hospital partners with on patient safety.
- Involving patients in all decisions about their care is an important step in preventing errors.
Better communications among patients and their health care providers is an important component in improving care. Share how your organization involves patients in their care.
How IHA Can Help
In March
2005, the IHA Patient Safety Steering Committee revised the IHA Quality/Patient Safety Data Guide, a comprehensive reference on the numerous quality and patient safety reporting activities involving Illinois hospitals. Earlier, the committee developed a set of principles entitled "Organizational Framework for a Culture of Safety." Virtually all of the Illinois hospital community has adopted the framework showing their commitment to advancing a patient safety culture.
IHA has also developed several initiatives to improve patient safety and quality. The
Patient Safety Learning Collaborative brings together health care organizations to share and exchange ideas, strategies and lessons learned on preventing patient harm and promoting breakthrough results - better patient outcomes and improved efficiencies. This collaborative will serve as a model, with key findings and learnings to be shared across the hospital community in Illinois. The
first program of the Collaborative in 2005 focused on preventing and reducing medication errors, one of the leading causes of injury to hospital patients.
In 2006, the Collaborative will launch a new initiative to improve the process
for effective communication when one caregiver replaces another. For questions about the Collaborative, contact
Becky Steward at: bsteward@ihastaff.org.
The Illinois Quality of Care Institute assists hospitals by providing support and services so they can continue to improve their quality of care. An interdisciplinary team
is focusing on the six key areas identified by the IOM: patient centeredness,
efficiency, effectiveness, patient safety, timeliness and equity, as well as the
evolving Medicare 8th Statement of Work and pay for performance initiatives.
Other IHA Quality initiatives include Explore Quality, a program designed
for hospitals to open their doors to other hospitals to discuss and share their
strategic approaches to challenging clinical, organizational, and systemic
issues within their hospital; and, the Comparative Performance Measurement
Initiative, to provide hospitals the opportunity to share information on
performance measurements among Illinois hospitals before a public release. For
specific questions on quality issues, contact Pat Merryweather at:
pmerryweather@ihastaff.org.
Links to Resources on Patient Safety and Quality
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