As my regular readers know, in December of 2007, the Board of Directors of BIDMC formally voted to support two audacious, long-term goals for improving the quality and safety of care for our patients.
The first is to eliminate preventable harm by January 1, 2012.
The second is to achieve patient satisfaction that places us among the top 2% of hospitals, also by January 2012.
These are not easy goals. Achieving this degree of excellence requires the ability to evaluate performance, implement changes, and evaluate again – in multiple small ways and across all departments and disciplines.
In preparation for the First Annual Silverman Symposium for Quality and Safety in April, staff from across BIDMC were invited to summarize their improvement work in a standardized format that captures the essence of the project in a single page.
I think you will be impressed with the variety of problems, approaches, and solutions represented by these project summaries. (The box on the left of the embedded web page has a list you can click.) While BIDMC has a small and very fine staff of quality improvement professionals to facilitate projects, the vast majority of the work occurs by health care workers dedicating special time and effort to create change. I hope you will agree that this collection demonstrates that BIDMC is a place where evaluation and improvement occurs every day.
Of course, we are happy to share more details of any of these programs with other hospitals. Just let me know if we can be helpful to your place.
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5 comments:
Paul, your website with projects is easy to navigate and very impressive. The consistent descriptions and display is great to read. You and you teams should be proud of the work you are doing. I especially liked the projects that listed next steps, to show that the safety work is never complete and is a continual journey.
There is ample research suggesting that patient satisfaction is highly dependent on non-outcome oriented measures-- from parking spots to amenities to quality of human interaction.
How does a patient satisfaction goal make sense?
Wow, that's a lot of projects! I randomly picked 2 that were familiar issues to me:
1. corridor storage. Seems minor, but not! In our hospital one basement corridor was always crammed with all kinds of equipment, gurneys, beds, etc., etc. - which would all magically disappear the day before JCAHO came. Then it would reappear the day after. Talk about useless busywork!!
2. Evidence based transfusion practice. This is a constant thorn in the side of blood bankers. I only wish the y axis of the graph had been in units other than "expenditures" - something like # of blood units, etc. It makes the whole goal seem to be money-saving, when of course minimizing transfusions is now being shown to be quite important for the health and recovery of most types of patients.
Just an outsider's view.
nonlocal MD
Paul, thanks so much for sharing this impressive list of projects. I'd like to learn more about how you and the Silverman Institute commissioned so many. I especially looked for the lessons learned on each. Senior leadership was a common thread.
Marie
Marie,
Most were not commissioned. they bubble up from the grass roots.
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