With the Wildcats

I just attended a session run by the University of Kentucky's Program for Quality, Safety & Patient Rights in the Center for Enterprise Quality and Safety. The director of the program is Dr. Joe Conigliaro, who related stories of meeting Bostonians during his matriculation at Harvard Medical School. "How's your brother/cousin?" he would be asked, even though he was not related to Tony.

But that's not the main point of this post. UK, in cooperation with the Lexington Veterans Administration, has a keen interest in patient safety. My role in the morning plenary session was to lay out legal, ethical, and practical implications of disclosing adverse events. Participants then attended concurrent sessions, one on transparency and disclosure evaluation through incident reporting, and the other on historical perspectives on transparency and disclosure.

My last event of the day was a panel discussion on these topics with: Dr. Steven Kraman, Vice Chairman of Internal Medicine at UK College of Medicine and Margaret Pisacano, Director of Risk Management (seen above). Unfortunately, I had to leave before hearing from State Representative Tom Burch, who I am sure gave an insightful perspective from the public policy point of view.

It is so satisfying to be with advocates and practitioners of patient quality and safety and to learn from one another's experiences. Wait, did I tell you they have a blog, too! It is hosted by Ann Smith, chief administrative officer at UK Albert B. Chandler Hospital, and jointly written with some of her colleagues. Please check it out and submit comments.