Patient Safety

Ever since the Institute of Medicine released its landmark report, "To Err is Human: Building a Safer Health System," in 1999, measuring, reporting, and improving patient safety have been talked about as imperatives. The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid (CMS) have announced that starting in 2008, they will no longer reimburse hospitals for what they deem “preventable medical errors." 

But in practice, the development and implementation of patient safety systems within hospitals has been “modest” at best, according to a study published in JAMA*. It’s not that healthcare systems don’t care about patient safety. Often, they lack the internal structures and processes to carry them out.

Improving patient safety requires physician participation from the outset. But often, an organization’s medical staff organization is not designed to take on the task of changing the processes that affect safety.

Front-line medical staff have the experience and expertise to locate safety problems and develop effective and appropriate solutions. Physician involvement in planning and managing operational change is essential to their engagement in carrying it out. 

We are the experts in physician-hospital collaboration. We can help develop internal structures to allow your physicians to operate more cohesively and accountably, provide leadership coaching and mentorship to help them guide change, and work with you to communicate the purpose and value of patient safety initiatives.

We can help you develop the metrics and performance dashboards to measure, track, and report the results of your safety efforts.