All Entries in the "HCPro" Category

Create patient safety solutions that are right for you

Editor’s note: Columnist Catherine Hinz, MHA, works as a leader in patient safety at HealthEast Care System in St. Paul, MN. Hinz previously worked at PatientSafe Solutions, Inc. Hinz has also completed a patient safety internship with the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality. The following is an excerpt of her monthly column, which can be found in its entirety in Patient Safety Monitor Journal.

Patient safety has long stood on a variety of tenets, some of which have formed the process and basis for how professionals (both leaders and clinicians) conduct improvement work. Some of these are well-known and accepted: Patient safety is a right. A high level of patient safety performance is nonnegotiable. Quality, risk, and patient safety are inseparable. A healthy culture is at the core of ideal patient safety performance.

I agree with all of these; however, there are two tenets of the patient safety movement that, while I believe do exist, I am beginning to question more as my leadership perspective evolves: that organizations do not compete over patient safety, and that sharing best practices is one of the best ways to improve across units, systems, and organizations.

Let’s first talk about competition. Historically, organizations have not experienced the shortage of resources, restricted access to capital, and flat patient volumes they are experiencing now. Therefore, the competition among organizations has never been fiercer. The uncertainty of health reform, organizational structure, and new regulations adds a layer of complexity that also has not been seen before. Regardless of the final outcome of health reform, it is certain that reimbursement will, more often than not, pit peers against each other in races of efficiency, cost reduction, and quality.

It is a certainty, then, that competition will reign even in the realm of patient safety. Organizations will discover new and better ways to avoid adverse events and near misses, and they will be incentivized in many cases not to advertise the mechanics of how they did it-no matter how ­helpful sharing these best ­practices might be for other, lagging organizations and the communities they serve. As it does now, safer care will improve reputations thanks to public reporting and greater consumerism in healthcare choices, but it will also potentially allow hospitals to retain or collect additional payment, creating more competition.

The market forces are providing the right environment for competition to be a strong contributing factor in the race for improved patient safety and zero harm, but not necessarily toward sharing practices; therefore, the idea that we should not compete in all things patient safety might not be the best path forward.

Read more.

Nurses Week: Contest to win a free webcast on preventing CAUTIs!

Nurses Week – More offerings from HCPro!

HCPro celebrates National Nurses Week!

The many measures of patient safety and quality

Defining quality through a patient’s eyes

Editor’s note: Columnist Catherine Hinz, MHA, works as a leader in patient safety at HealthEast Care System in St. Paul, MN. Hinz previously worked at PatientSafe Solutions, Inc. Hinz has also completed a patient safety internship with the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality. The following is an excerpt of her monthly column, which can be found in its entirety in Patient Safety Monitor Journal.

There are always times to come back to center-to return to why we work so hard to improve processes, performance, and measures like overall hospital ratings. In the sea of scores, metrics, and meetings we often drown in, we forget to come up for air and see that relationship with patients who seek care and healing from (and with) us.

As of late, I’ve spent more time learning about very specialized patient populations. These are patients who are served by disparate health systems, and who are often cared for by community or state organizations. These are patients with many needs and challenges-mental illness, chemical addiction, homelessness, and other atypical situations where the normal metrics of quality may not apply in the ways they were originally designed.

Think of the patient population suffering from traumatic brain injuries, who may now pose a substantial safety risk to themselves. This population has intensive and specific care needs, and thus they have a different set of expectations of quality, which may be defined in terms of activities of daily life and relationships with caregivers and family.

Through learning more about specialized patient populations, I’ve learned that “quality” can be ambiguous and that its true definition is a moving target. I’ve come to the conclusion that quality really needs to be dictated by the specific needs and desires of the patients and the families who care for them-not by the organizations, who are searching for a simple way to measure and ultimately pay for care.

Patient safety, while closely related to quality in many ways, is far different in that it represents freedom from accidental injury and harm.

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CAUTIs still a problem

Bit of a plug, but I think my visitors will find HCPro’s webcast on CAUTIs (catheter-associated urinary tract infections) extremely relevant, especially as CAUTIs cause 35% of all hospital-acquired infections every year, with 38,000 patient infections, and costing hospitals $400 million a year, according to an October 2011 National Quality Forum’s Partnership for Patients/ National Priorities Partnership webinar.

And don’t forget that The Joint Commission named CAUTIs a National Patient Safety Goal to be fully implemented by 2013. The Partnership for Patients also aims to reduce preventable CAUTIs by 50% by 2013.

So join nurse practitioner Mikel Gray, PhD, PNP, FNP, CUNP CCCN, FAANP, FAAN, and chief of infection prevention and 2012 APIC conference speaker Brian Koll, MD, FACP, FIDSA, for a live presentation of proven methods on CAUTI reduction, including how Beth Israel Medical Center reduced the number of CAUTIs by 83% using proven organization-wide catheter best practices such as evidence-based practice, staff education, daily need assessments, multidisciplinary teamwork, monitoring, and root-cause analysis. You’ll also get best practices to educate and train your entire staff.

Learn more here.

Just a note that now, you can buy the live audio and download the on demand version free.

Transparency… are we there yet?

Apparently not. Public reporting of surgical site infections is required in only eight states. That fact was brought to light by a new Johns Hopkins University report, which calls for more reporting. Lead author of the report, Martin Makary, MD, notes that patients still have little information when choosing hospitals.

Personally, I think the bigger issue is that public reporting gives hospitals, from the top down, a real push to do better. I think Makary does too:

“Nothing motivates hospitals to improve quality and listen to their front line staff like public reporting,” he says. “In order for the consumer to interpret publicly reported SSI rates, it is imperative that the data be collected and reported in a standardized manner,” he and his co-authors wrote.

I would have to agree. Surgical site infections not only result in 8,000 deaths a year in the U.S., they occur in 4% to 25% of patients who undergo major surgical procedures, and their cost to the healthcare system is about $10 billion annually (these stats are mentioned in the report and come from other studies).

Makary calls out state hospital associations for not supporting public reporting. What do you think? Is public reporting the way to change hospital culture?

Source: HealthLeaders Media

What’s new with AHAP: We want your surveyor stories

Are you a member of AHAP (Association for Healthcare Accreditation Professionals)? No? Interested?

Whether you are or not, AHAP is running a fun little contest I thought I’d share:

Has a Joint Commission surveyor ever called you by the wrong name? Did you accidentally fumble your words while presenting the findings of your mock tracer to leadership? Or maybe you answered a series of survey questions perfectly only to find out you had a huge piece of spinach in your teeth the whole time.

We want to hear about it! If you have a funny or awkward story to tell involving a surveyor or survey prep activity that you’d like to share with your peers, please e-mail associate director Jackie Beck at jbeck@hcpro.com with your story. We’ll feature the collection of stories in our next issue of the AHAP Insider, a quarterly membership journal published exclusively for AHAP members.

It is our promise that your stories will be 100% anonymous.

Patient safety in 140 characters

In honor of patient safety week, the National Patient Safety Foundation hosted a tweet chat, in which participants all follow the same hashtag (#keyword) to have a large conversation. If you missed it, you can read the conversation by searching twitter for “#PSAW2012.” I suggest checking it out (you don’t even have to have Twitter to conduct a search) for the resourceful links alone. Comment below or tweet @PSeditor if you joined and what you liked about it.

Here are some of the topics and facts brought up in conversation:

• Health literacy:

Twelve percent of adults have good health literacy

E-literature might help follow up with patients post-visit

MDs tend to interrupt patients after 18 seconds of speaking

• PSAW:

Getting PSAW recognized by more of the general public to spread awareness beyond the healthcare setting

Why PSAW is observed, recognized, but not celebrated

Next PSAW is March 3 –9, 2013!

Here are some resources brought up in conversation:

NSPF’s new “Ask Me” video

AHRQ’s “Questions are the Answer” video

IMSP has new tools and resources

Health Literacy: Reducing the Burden of a Complex Healthcare System

Patient Safety Week 2012: Informing the Journey, Not Changing the Destination

Checklists that patients and doctors follow can improve hospital care

Patient Safety Knowledge Quiz

Dreaming the dream (by Peter Provonost)

Navigating the Health Care System: Advice Columns from Dr. Carolyn Clancy

The Price of Tradition

Do Electronic Medical Records Save Money?

Words to Watch – Fact Sheet

What’s in a Name? Safer care, for one.

20 Tips to Help Prevent Medical Errors: Patient Fact Sheet

NPSF Tools and Resources for Patients and Consumers

No One Should Celebrate National Patient Safety Week

Twitter chat, HCPro discount, in honor of Patient Safety Awareness Week

I hope you are all aware that next week is Patient Safety Awareness Week (PSAW)! In honor of the event, I have some announcements:

Twitter Chat

First, the National Patient Safety Foundation, the organization that created PSAW, is hosting a Twitter chat. Twitter chats are a great way to talk to new and familiar colleagues from all over. It’s easy enough to follow and participate: the key here is #PSAW2012 – use it in your tweets to join the conversation; follow the hashtag to read what others are saying. The topic? Patient engagement. NPSF staff will answer questions, offer tips, and provide links to resources. When? Wednesday, March 7, at 1 pm ET.

HCPro Discount

Save 15% on HCPro products during Patient Safety Awareness Week!

In celebration of Patient Safety Awareness Week, HCPro is offering 15% off your entire order from March 4th to March 10th! Click here to visit our website and browse our wide selection of books, training videos, live webcasts and more. Be sure to enter coupon code PSAWK12 at checkout to receive your discount. Call 800/650-6787 to place your order and mention Source Code EZINEAD or visit The HCPro Healthcare Marketplace.

We have great patient safety-related products, including books on Occurrence Reporting, Quality Improvement for Nurse Managers, Creating a Just Culture, Performance Improvement, Assessing the Risk (for suicide), of course Patient Safety Monitor, and many, many, more!