Patient Safety is defined as “the absence of preventable harm to a patient and reduction of risk of unnecessary harm associated with health care to an acceptable minimum.” Every hospital in America has a stated mission to prioritize Patient Safety above all else. “First, do no harm” is the most fundamental principle of any health care service. Every healthcare organization says it, but are they really doing everything they can to prioritize patient safety?
The first step to solving a problem is admitting that you have one. But what if you aren’t aware that you have a problem? Especially in the Critical Access and Community Hospital space, where staff is stretched to non-optimal lengths, how can a facility, not only stay on top of patient safety, but take the time necessary to rigorously evaluate processes and policies to improve their quality of care?
Beyond the moral and ethical obligation to provide the best health care possible, there are clear financial benefits, although often unrecognized, unknown, or undervalued, to doing no harm. When was the last time you truly evaluated your facilities process of minimizing risk events, and optimizing quality outcomes? Could it be improved upon? Can it make your facility more profitable? The answer is a resounding yes.
Look at your patient fall data to see how much you’ve paid for Cost of Harm falls last year – what else could your hospital have used that money for? Next time you need to tighten your budget, remember cost cuts don’t just come from lowering staffing or standards. You can also save by minimizing how much quality and risk incidents are costing your hospital.
We’ve found this is true amongst our customers. Using ActionCue© CI’s Performance Improvement Plans and the guidance of our Implementation & Support team, one of our customer hospitals reduced falls at their facility by 25% over three years. Based on the Center of Disease Dynamic’s Cost of Harm figures, this saved them almost a million dollars in additional costs.
Another hospital saved more than a million dollars over three years as their CLASBI cases reduced by almost 47%. A third hospital saved more than $80,000 by cutting their rate of VAP cases by 66% in three years of using ActionCue CI.
Improving the quality of care, through proactively tracking and tackling risk and quality incidents can lead to significant savings from the cost of harm avoided – money that can fund additional staff, equipment upgrades and other improvements.
This positive cycle can multiply – every dollar saved by avoiding a Cost of Harm event can be spent on further eliminating Cost of Harm events, leading to more savings from the cost of harm avoided. As the cycle continues, avoidable costs decrease while the quality of care – and your reputation – increases.
This article first appeared in the March 2024 edition of Marketplace, the monthly newsletter of TORCH Management Services, Inc.
For a long time, Quality and Safety Event reporting have been recognized as important but often downplayed tasks when it came to getting the attention of executives and allocating resources. Shifting investments and allocating resources has become even more of a challenge as budgets continue to get tighter and tighter.
Quality-related reimbursement, as applied through Value-Based Purchasing (VBP), MACRO/MIPS, ACO programs and other components in the pay-for performance (P4P) model, have only increased the pressure without providing much guidance on how to actually improve quality.
Although the goal of submitting quality and safety reports and data to external organizations is becoming something more than just checking a “to-do” item off the list, much of the reporting and education efforts in hospitals and other healthcare organizations fall short of making real advancements in Performance Improvement.
The ROI that can perk up executives’ attention and guide their investment is to make Performance Improvement more effective and efficient. While Performance Improvement has been a focus for decades, most organizations focus on the wrong things, such as manually gathering information and data and over-educating staff on the theories and science of QI methodologies. Others are still wasting their time with more meetings, more documents and artifacts and more working overhead.
Worse still, all of these efforts suffer negligible support from innovative IT solutions that are specifically designed to support more efficient and effective Performance Improvement. This is the year, maybe even the quarter, to change that.
Start from the Top
Championing the shift from investing in reporting to investing in the Performance Improvement process itself has to come from the top. Senior management up to the C-suite needs to not only lead, inspire and set the direction, but also provide the resources and fully communicate the importance of creating a smarter and more efficient Performance Improvement process.
Instead of merely asking staff and managers to just “work harder and better,” the goal needs to be about making their job easier and more streamlined.
7 Steps to Better Performance Improvement
An efficient Performance Improvement system needs to be supported by innovative and intuitive IT and can be achieved by taking the following steps.
Improving ROI with Technology
Each of these steps has the potential to be a project in its own right and a daunting task at that. Fortunately, a growing awareness of how Performance Improvement and Quality and Safety reporting can feed one another is prompting a shift in technologies and platforms to support this new focus.
ActionCue CI was built intentionally to increase ROI by changing how Performance Improvement is managed and facilitated using the steps outlined above. Learn more about how ActionCue can help executives, risk/quality managers and clinical staff bring Performance Improvement into the 21st century.
A few weeks back we talked about how hand-hygiene can significantly decrease hospital-contracted infections, and by extension reduce healthcare organization costs — not to mention reduce unnecessary infection-related deaths. A new study out shows that hand washing frequency drops off near the end of healthcare professional worker’s shifts.
Led by Hengchen Dai, a Ph.D. candidate at the University of Pennsylvania, researchers analyzed three years of hand-washing data from more than 4,000 caregivers in 35 hospitals across the U.S. They discovered that hand-washing compliance rates plummeted an average of 8.7% by the end of a normal 12-hour shift.
Hospital-contracted infections account for nearly 100,000 deaths per year in the United States, making it a serious problem in need of attention. From December 2006 through December 2008, the Institute for Healthcare Improvement (IHI) initiated the 5 Million Lives Campaign with the aim of supporting the improving medical care, and significantly reducing levels of morbidity (illness or medical harm such as adverse drug events or surgical complications) and mortality.
Hospitals participating in the Campaign were asked to prevent 5 million incidents of medical harm over the two-year period. The IHI continues its efforts to reduce incidents of medical harm in the article What Zero Looks Like: Eliminating Hospital Acquired Infections.
There is no doubt that hospital-acquired infections are a serious issue. There are also large amounts of evidence that shows a few simple methods can significantly reduce their number.
The road to lower mortality rates, and reduced hospital costs, begins with establishing a commitment to a culture of quality. Then providing staff with the tools they need to easily record, measure and report their performance.
Few health stories in 2013 captured as much news coverage and attention than the launch of the Federal Health Exchange website and its rocky beginnings. Many were excited by the prospect of lower health insurance costs, promised by the administration, and flocked to the website to sign up. But, due to technical difficulties, hundreds of thousands of customers were left out in the cold and unable to enroll in coverage. Insurance companies reported very few applications received even months after the site’s launch.
By November, 2014, the problems that plagued the site earlier had seemed to be fixed with the officials announcing 100,000 application submissions on the first day of open enrollment. But, higher than expected premium cost and lower coverage for consumers — combined with complicated and costly systems for hospitals — highlights just how much further ‘Obamacare’ has to go before it will be seen as a success.
While Ebola didn’t start in 2014, it sure came on like a lion then. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported that, as of January 6, 2015, a total of 21,007 cases were reported, and nearly 9,000 deaths were attributed to the disease.
The inevitable happened which captured headlines around the country, igniting a firestorm, sending people running for surgical masks and hazmat suites to protect themselves from the disease. But, was it much-ado-about-nothing? Within a few weeks, everything seemed back to normal again.
Enterovirus D68 (EV-D68) took the U.S. by surprise in 2014, with a confirmed total of 1,153 people within 49 states and the District of Columbia affected.
Amid the ongoing debate whether e-cigarettes are a less dangerous alternative to smoking, the use of these devices soared in 2014. A U.S. National Institutes of Health survey found that more than double number of 10th graders are likely to have tried e-cigarettes, to those who will have tried traditional cigarettes.
No matter where you land on the issue of healthy meals in public schools one thing is for sure, the kids weren’t happy in 2014. Championed by First Lady, Michelle Obama, federal regulations on what constitutes a healthy meal were met with opposition from the recipients of those lunches. Kids around the country took to social media, tweeting photos of their meals along with the trending hashtag #ThanksMichelleObama.
When most think about a patient seeking assisted suicide we picture a face of many more years than that of Brittany Maynard’s, an attractive 29-year old woman from California. Brittany suffered from cancer and moved to Oregon in 2014 to take advantage of the state’s “Death With Dignity Act” — at the same time capturing the nations attention to the serious subject of an individuals right to die.
A small but growing number of parents who have shun vaccinating their children, based on beliefs that vaccines cause conditions like Autism, are unwittingly playing a role in the resurgence of once-rare childhood diseases. In 2014, California suffered its worst outbreak of pertussis, also know as ‘whooping cough’, in 70 years. CDC statistics also show that U.S. measles cases have reached a 20-year high.
Although the legalization of marijuana in Washington state, Oregon, and Colorado was for recreational use, I have added it to this list for the social significance it points to. Namely, the changing tide in public sentiment toward pot and its use. Many states have already, up-till-now, had laws for its legal medical use. However, in many cases, the wider view of pot as a ‘bad thing’ stymied its spread as a potential option for those seeking a serious alternative to pharmaceuticals. This recent wave of states legalizing its use could signal a change in opinion, and open doors for patients looking for other options.
America, and the world, was shocked when it learned that one of its beloved stars had committed suicide. Robin Williams took his own life after years of struggling with depression. After his death, Williams’ wife revealed he had also recently been diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease, and an autopsy revealed his brain showed signs of Lewd Body Disease, a form of dementia that can cause hallucinations and concentration problems.
Although it’s not confirmed these conditions played a role in William’s suicide, his death has shed light on several frequently misdiagnosed or understood disorders.
Restaurants and concession stands must now post calorie counts on their menus. Under newly finalized FDA rules, chain restaurants, vending machines, and theatre and amusement park snacks must post their calorie counts. Personally, I don’t want to know my ‘elephant ear’ is 1,500 calories… I just want to shove it in my face while spinning 800 rpm’s on the tilt-a-whirl.
By first depositing living cells encapsulated in a hydrogel with a 3D printer, scientists at Weill Cornell Medical College were able to construct and grow the first artificial ears that look and act like real ones. Using human cells, specifically from the same patient, reduces any possibility of rejection.
Nurses once again topped the list of ‘professions with the highest ethical standards’ in Gallup’s 2014 survey on honesty and ethics. Way to go nurses… Whoop, whoop!
A North Carolina man became the first patient in state history to receive a “bionic eye”, Argus II retinal prostheses, allowing him to see light for the first time in 30 years. Then, in the later half of the year, a double arm amputee was fitted with robotic arms that he was able to control… wait for it, with his mind! How freakin’ cool is that?
I know you can relate to this situation. You’re walking through a parking lot when suddenly a car alarm starts going off and doesn’t stop, and (I’m willing to bet), you keep on walking without looking back. Sound familiar?
When car alarms first emerged back in the 80s they were few and far between. The ear splitting sounds of the alarms turned heads of onlookers, to what could be a serious situation in need of attention. It didn’t take too long, however, for us all to become desensitized to the familiar warbles and chirps, and we no longer paid any attention to them — defeating their purpose.
The same desensitization, or fatigue, happens with clinical alarms in hospitals. But, there are ways to help reduce alarm fatigue according to a study published in Pediatrics.
In the study researchers at Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center, led by Christopher Dandoy, M.D., of the hospital’s Cancer and Blood Diseases Institute, found that a standardized, team-based approach could dramatically reduce alarm fatigue — helping to eliminate the possibility of not responding to a true event.
The researchers created a standardized cardiac monitor care procedure for the hospital’s 24-bed pediatric bone marrow transplant unit.
As part of the project, Dandoy and his team developed a process for ordering monitor parameters according to age-appropriate standards, pain-free daily electrode replacement, personalized daily cardiac monitor parameter assessment and a reliable way of appropriately discontinuing monitors. Under these protocols, the median number of daily cardiac alarms fell from 180 to 40, while caregiver compliance increased from 38 percent to 95 percent.
“Cardiac monitors constitute the majority of alarms throughout the hospital,” Dandoy said in a hospital announcement. “We think our approach to reducing monitor alarms can serve as a model for other hospitals throughout the country.”
Fewer false alarms, he added, will allow hospital staff to devote more attention to significant alarms. Although the process was enacted in a pediatric unit, Dandoy and his team said it was applicable to “most units with cardiac monitor care.”
“Hospitals are greatly concerned about alarm fatigue because it interferes with patient safety, and it exposes patients–and the hospitals themselves–to grave harm,” said Michael Wong, executive director of the Physician-Patient Alliance for Health & Safety, who presented findings at the Society for Technology in Anesthesia, earlier this year that hospital staff are exposed to an average of 350 alarms per bed, per day based on a sample from an intensive care unit at the Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore.
Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center says nationwide adoption could increase patient safety
You can read the full study here.