Health Aff (Millwood)
April 2011
What does it take to transform the safety of health care across a nation, even a small one? The Scottish Patient Safety Programme, mandated by the government, began in January 2008 with the aim of reducing mortality in Scotland's hospitals by 15 percent in five years. With the collaboration of political leaders, senior health care managers, clinicians, and patients, the program has improved the quality and safety of hospital care. At the halfway point, in-hospital mortality rates have declined by 5 percent, and infection rates for certain hospital-associated infections have been cut by more than half.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFJt Comm J Qual Patient Saf
October 2006
Background: The Institute for Healthcare Improvement has tested and taught use of a variety of trigger tools, including those for adverse medication events, neonatal intensive care events, and a global trigger tool for measuring all event categories in a hospital. The trigger tools have evolved as a complimentary adjunct to voluntary reporting. The Trigger Tool technique was used to identify the rate of occurrence of adverse events in the intensive care unit (ICU), and a subset of ICUs described those events in detail.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground: A "bundle" of ventilator care processes (peptic ulcer disease prophylaxis, deep vein thrombosis prophylaxis, elevation of the head of the bed, and a sedation vacation), which may also reduce ventilator-associated pneumonia (VAP) rates, can serve as a focus for improvement strategies in intensive care units (ICUs). Between July 2002 and January 2004, teams of critical care clinicians from 61 health care organizations participated in a collaborative on improving care in the ICU.
Methods: ICU team members posted data monthly on a Web-based extranet and submitted narrative descriptions describing the changes tested and the strategies implemented.
Front Health Serv Manage
July 2004
Because waits, delays, and cancellations are so common in healthcare, patients and providers assume that waiting is an inevitable, but regrettable, part of the care process. For years, hospitals responded to delays by adding resources--more beds and buildings or more staff--as the only way to deal with an increasingly needy population. Furthermore, as long as payment for services covered the costs, more construction and more staff allowed for continued inefficiencies in the system.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFPurpose: To develop and implement a set of valid and reliable yet practical measures of intensive care units (ICU) quality of care in a cohort of ICUs and to estimate, based on current performance, the potential opportunity to improve quality.
Methods: We included 13 adult medical and surgical ICUs in urban community teaching and community hospitals. To monitor performance on previously identified quality measures, we developed 3 data collection tools: the Team Leader, Daily Rounding, and Infection Control forms.
Background: Clear communication is imperative if teams in any industry expect to make improvements. An estimated 85% of errors across industries result from communication failures.
Purpose: The purpose of this study was to evaluate and improve the effectiveness of communication during patient care rounds in the intensive care unit (ICU) using a daily goals form.