For more than a decade, physicians and team members at CHS hospitals have embraced safety as their top priority to help deliver better outcomes for patients, reduce risk and liability, and build trust. Since starting on our high reliability journey in 2012, we’ve achieved and maintained an 89% reduction in the Serious Safety Event Rate.
Now, the New England Journal of Medicine has recognized CHS’ accomplishments in the NEJM Catalyst publication, an online, peer-reviewed journal dedicated to the latest innovations, big ideas and practical solutions for health care delivery transformation.
“The catalyst in our journey to zero preventable harm was in analyzing baseline data for serious safety events and recognizing that preventable patient harm was occurring, similar to other health systems and consistent with reported trends,” says Lynn Simon, M.D., President, Healthcare Innovation and Chief Medical Officer. “Our goal became zero events of preventable harm, which we believe is possible and the only acceptable target to align with safety as a core value.”
“Ongoing Journey to Zero Preventable Harm,” authored by Dr. Simon and CHS Vice President and Patient Safety Officer Terrie Van Buren, details the numerous safety processes, human error prevention behaviors, and a structured approach to cause analysis that directly resulted in reductions in medication errors, patient falls, healthcare-associated infections, procedural mistakes and other serious safety events.
CHS was one of the first healthcare organizations in the nation to create an AHRQ federally-listed Patient Safety Organization, or PSO, to enable ongoing conversations and data analysis in a legally-protected environment to identify opportunities for continuous improvement.
“Thousands of patients have been spared from harm because our clinical and support teams embraced the importance of keeping their patients safe and actively participated in the changes that produced these results,” says Dr. Simon. “Across CHS, safety is a core value embedded in the hearts and minds of our caregivers – a commitment that is constant, unchanging, and unyielding in the face of the latest trends or competing priorities.”
You can read the entire article here.