Patient safety group works to reduce medical errors
With mounting evidence that the vast majority of medical errors in this country are systems-related and not attributable to individual negligence or misconduct, the nonprofit National Patient Safety Foundation (NPSF) has launched the first nationwide initiative to achieve measurable systems change in hospitals.
Under the banner of "Stand Up for Patient Safety," 17 leading hospitals from across the country are joining forces with NPSF to mobilize a groundswell of activity and support among all hospital leaders to reduce errors and improve patient safety. This movement calls for replacing traditional barriers to patient safety with a new culture of accountability, trust, system improvement, and continuous learning.
Founding hospitals will help chart the course for the future by taking a strong and public stand for patient safety and raising the bar for others to follow as the Stand Up for Patient Safety campaign is rolled out nationally. As hospital leaders engage in the campaign, NPSF will provide their hospitals with new tools to implement systems change, including training modules, monitoring and reporting program activities and breakthrough strategies, and new educational materials for patients, says Timothy Flaherty, MD, founding NPSF board member and current chairman of the Board of the American Medical Association.
"We are confident that a national call to action such as Stand Up for Patient Safety will go a long way in keeping patient safety at the forefront of health care," Flaherty says. "By focusing on continuous, positive determination and action in an open and transparent manner, we will demonstrate that it doesn’t take a tragic incidence of error to mobilize true leaders for change."
Behind this new campaign are disturbing estimates about the number of deaths and injuries each year that are caused by medical errors. New data just released from The Commonwealth Fund find that an estimated 22.8 million people have experienced a medical error of some kind, personally or through at least one family member. This data reinforces a 1999 Institute of Medicine report that revealed that from 44,000-98,000 deaths each year occur due to medical errors at an annual price tag of $17 billion to $29 billion.
Often the exact magnitude of these statistics is debated, and the public’s attention is drawn away from real issue. NPSF leaders have taken the stand that whether everyone agrees with these conclusions, one preventable error is one error too many. The Stand Up for Patient Safety campaign is also the outgrowth of a new consensus among government agencies, medical societies and the business community that hospitals are ground zero when it comes to patient safety. While medical errors occur in all health care settings, the thinking goes, how they are addressed in the hospital has wide-ranging implications for the rest of the health care industry. This is because the risks associated with hospitalization are significant, the strategies for system improvement are crucial and can be better documented, and the importance of patient trust is paramount, says David Page, CEO of Fairview Health Services in Minneapolis.
"If the nation is going to address the problem of reducing medical errors, we must start where we can have the greatest impact; and this is in the hospital setting," Page says. "Not only are hospitals the nexus of health care delivery at the community level, they bring together all the diverse forces that play a role in patient safety. Unless hospitals take the lead, it is likely that real change will be slow and preventable medical errors will persist."
While most hospitals are committing at least some level of resources to patient safety, one area of great concern to NPSF is how little is known generally about the engagement of hospital boards of trustees in preventing medical errors by supporting full disclosure when errors do occur and by allocating adequate resources to prevention. Page says this could be one of the most significant barriers to effective action and change throughout the institution and the community. Through the engagement of hospital leaders in the Stand Up for Patient Safety campaign, Page says he hopes the call to reduce errors from the top-down will not be ignored. NPSF will provide hospitals with new educational tools that can be used to elevate patient safety at the community level. These materials will include pamphlets, posters, videos, and web-based information.
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