After inspectors found hygiene and other safety lapses in its dialysis unit, Baystate Medical Center filed hundreds of reports with state regulators. Learn how the hospital handled the episode.
“I want hospital administrators to invite us to the table whenever they make a decision that impacts patients and families. And from what I know, every decision they make does that.”
Meaningful victories in patient safety can happen at medical centers of any size when everyone from physician to receptionist plays a key role—as the staff at Mount Auburn Medical Associates, a primary care group in Watertown, discovered.
Recent news calling medical errors the third leading cause of U.S. death, triggered by a Johns Hopkins article, highlights the power and limitations of patient safety tracking. Estimates vary widely, perhaps understating the true dimensions of the problem.
Eighty-one of the state's 98 hospitals have PFACs that bring important patient perspective to decisions. However, there is still more to do—as members of one Boston PFAC explain.
French patient safety expert Dr. Réne Amalberti has built on research to explain why and how groups of health care workers can fall into risky habits, and how to stem it.
The CDC wants every hospital to have an antibiotic stewardship program to counter the threat of ‘super-bugs.’ So last month the National Quality Forum published a playbook to help organizations do just that, starting with leadership backing. View a sample from the playbook on how to underscore leadership’s commitment to the effort.
Welcome back to Patient Safety Beat. During the Betsy Lehman Center’s initial research activities, health care providers told us they wanted more opportunities for shared learning from adverse events reported to the state. This newsletter is one way to help accelerate the spread of information about common patient safety challenges —along with actionable strategies for response and prevention. This month, we are grateful to Baystate Medical Center for sharing its story of actions taken in the wake of concerns raised about safety practices in the hospital’s dialysis unit. As documented by the National Patient Safety Foundation, greater transparency around patient safety is an essential ingredient to preventing patient harm - both physical and emotional - and contributes to better health outcomes, higher patient satisfaction, and lower costs. We hope you will find useful lessons in Baystate’s experience and in their willingness to discuss it.
Patient Safety Beat is published monthly by the Betsy Lehman Center, a state agency that uses communications, research, and data to catalyze the efforts of providers, policymakers, and consumers working toward safer health care in Massachusetts.
