All Entries Tagged With: "New Jersey"

Thinking differently, working together at the IHI forum

Last week, I attended the Institute for Healthcare Improvement’s National Forum on Quality Improvement in Health Care, and I certainly wasn’t the only one. Six thousand of you attended in person, and more than 15,000 attended virtually.

The national conference lives up to its hype. It is invigorating to attend so many sessions dedicated to quality improvement. Keynotes from U.S. Secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services Kathleen Sebelius as well as the new president and CEO of IHI, Maureen Bisognano were just the tip of the iceberg.

Bisognano talked about the triple aim of IHI: improving the health of the population, experience of healthcare, and the cost of care. Many, she said, see two pathways to these goals: cutting costs and rationing care; however, Bisognano championed a third: creating new designs.

This was what many sessions I attended were about: working with others to think differently in order to truly achieve different results. Participants were urged to think differently about what harm is preventable, about why physicians may be reluctant to participate in quality improvement efforts, and about the patient experience as a whole, from ED visit to wherever the patient may end up.

I must also mention one of the other keynote speakers, Cory Booker, mayor of Newark, New Jersey. Booker has no experience in healthcare, but he certainly has a different way of implementing actions that is translatable to healthcare. Newark has seen more than 40% reductions in both shootings and murders (as of July 1, 2008, about midway through his first term). Booker credits this accomplishment with aiming incredibly high and focusing on the power of collaborating. To reach high ambitions, he urged, you must take the collective will of a community and embrace it. Engaging the whole of the community, he said, will create results unimaginable of the individual

Those were some of the highlights of the conference. Stay tuned to the Patient Safety Blog and Patient Safety Monitor Journal for more topics covered at the conference.

Were you at the forum? What did you think? What was your highlight of the week? Please share with your peers below!

Adverse events may become public in New Jersey

A New Jersey bill currently going through legislature would make some information of “never” events available to the public online, according to an AARP Bulletin. Currently, New Jersey’s 73 acute care hospitals reports these never events under a confidential system. The public would be able to view data concerning 14 serious medical errors, including wrong-site surgery, post-surgical hemorrhage or infection, and blood transfusion problems.

The New Jersey Hospital Association supports this part of the bill, but is concerned about another part which would prevent hospitals and physicians from charging for treatments to repair mistakes-a section of the bill the New Jersey Medical Society, which represents physicians, opposes.

Yet another source of MRSA: ambulance stethoscopes

As you work hard at preventing infections, you might want to think of where the patient has been just prior to coming to your hospital-the ambulance.

A recent New York Times article reports that stethoscopes used by ambulance staff in New Jersey carried MRSA (16 out of 50 tested had the bacteria). Researchers found that some ambulance workers couldn’t remember the last time they were cleaned.

The findings are part of a report appearing in the current issue of Prehospital Emergency Care.

NJ hospitals may have to publicize errors

In what’s becoming a familiar refrain, yet another state may soon publish error rates for individual hospitals. A state Senate committee will meet soon to discuss a bill that would require the New Jersey Department of Health and Senior Services to publish how often errors occur at individual hospitals.

Preventable medical errors are already reported to the state and federal government by NJ facilities, but the information is currently only reported on a statewide basis. The bill would also prohibit hospitals and physicians from billing insurers and patients for procedures in which errors were made.

Since the Patient Safety Act of 2004 went into effect in 2004, the state has published two reports on medical errors. In 2006, nearly 40% of the errors reported were patient falls and half of all reported mistakes were attributed to communication problems.

New Jersey hospitals feeling economic pinch

New Jersey hospitals, like many across the nation I would assume, are feeling the effect of a dwindling economy. Layoffs, delays in capital improvement projects, and more charity-care patients are a few of NJ hospitals’ woes, according to a report in the Philadelphia Business Journal. The New Jersey Hospital Association conducted a survey over the last two months involving 74 of New Jersey’s acute-care hospitals. Key findings include:

• 45 hospitals reported layoffs in 2008
• 21% anticipate layoffs this year
• 13% have instituted a hiring freeze
• 17% eliminated services such as clinics and inpatient psychiatric care
• 76% saw in increase in emergency department visits

Not surprisingly, the New Jersey Hospital Association says the cuts are affecting patient care. I’m guessing this is just an example of what’s happening across the nation. I’m curious to know how the economy is affecting your hospitals. How are cuts affecting patient care? How are they affecting you? Has your hospital managed to stay afloat, and how? What are you concerns for the upcoming months?

NJ bill would reveal hospital ‘never events’

A new bill working its way through the New Jersey legislature would reveal the identities of hospitals that commit medical errors including wrong site surgery and healthcare-associated infections, the Star-Ledger reports today.

Approved by a state Senate panel Monday, the legislation would expand the Patient Safety Act, which was enacted in 2005 and requires hospitals to report mistakes to the state Department of Health and Senior Services. The law currently protects hospital confidentiality because its sponsors believe it encourages disclosure.  The bill (S2471) provides broader disclosure under a compromise that a number of groups–including hospital groups, the AARP, unions, and state officials–supported in principle, the paper reports.

The bill now advances to the full state Senate.

The state would collect the information from billing records and publish it in the annual New Jersey Hospital Performance Report, which would be available online. In addition, the bill prevents the hospitals that made the mistakes and physicians who have admitted playing a role in the errors from seeking any payment for care associated with the errors. The bill would track the “never events” defined by CMS.