So how can physicians contribute?
The study above makes abundantly clear the importance of robust interaction and close alignment between physicians and other hospital leaders in developing a quality strategy for the institution.
“Hospital leaders, including the board, senior executives, and the hospitals’ physicians and other internal stakeholders, need to establish priorities for QI, including both identification and mitigation of risks and hazards and improvement of clinical outcomes.” See Vaughn, et.al. at 7 as well as Denham, CR, Patient safety practices: Leaders can turn barriers into accelerators; J Patient Safety 2005; 1(1):41-55 and Denham, CR, Bagian, J, Daley, J, et.al. No excuses: the reality that demands action. J. Patient Safety 2005; 1(3):170-75
After having completed successfully their own educational curriculum in patient safety, physician leaders should educate both senior management and the boards of their hospitals in patient safety and what they as leaders can and must do to ensure it at their institutions and in their own medical practices. Physicians should be the leaders in the implementations of all types of safety-enhancing technologies. These may include: electronic medical records, computerized physician order entry and integrated mobile systems, computerized adverse event tracking, clinical decision support, risk adjusted outcomes measurement systems, bar coding and radiofrequency identification (RFID) patient tracking systems. Physicians may also lead in less technical, but equally important areas, such as promoting more systematic methods of communication such as the SBAR method (discussing patients’ Situation, Background, Assessment and Recommendations), Rapid Response Teams, and Crew Resource Management efforts. This will be the subject of future Risk Review articles.
How can Princeton Insurance help?
Princeton Insurance is planning to launch several patient safety initiatives over the course of the rest of 2007. The first of these initiatives will concern the main topic of this article, viz.: Getting the Board On-Board to Lead Patient Safety and Quality Improvement. This is one of the six new interventions promoted by IHI’s new 5 Million Lives Campaign for 2007-8. The president and CEO of IHI, Donald Berwick, M.D., M,P.P. regards this as the first among equals of these new interventions, having recently called 2007 “The Year of Governance.”
Princeton Insurance looks forward to working with hospital leaders, especially physicians, to help get their Boards On-Board to lead patient safety and quality. In addition to the strong evidence cited above of the positive impact that this will have on the quality and safety of care, leaders at Princeton Insurance feel that there is a growing evidentiary base of the positive risk management benefits of doing this, also. This leadership initiative will serve as the foundation for additional safety initiatives such as improving communication among care providers, preventing hospital acquired infections, adverse drug events and surgical complications. How Princeton may join with you to accomplish these goals will be the subject of subsequent Risk Review articles and other communications in the coming months.
