To look at it another way, consider a conversation Dr. Pronovost had with friends in engineering who previously worked on missions launching satellites into space.
“They said to me, ‘Peter, you guys are thinking about this backwards in healthcare. If we had to put a mission up…it can blow up for 12 reasons. It didn’t blow up for reason No. 1—call it a bloodstream infection—but it did blow up for reasons 2 through 12, do you think we’d be patting ourselves on the back [because] that No. 1 reason didn’t get us?”
In that vein, Dr. Pronovost believes that hospitalists can be a lynchpin in what he calls “change leadership.”
“Hospitalists have an essential role in improving the quality and safety of care for hospitalized patients and for transitions,” he says. “I would say that between quality and safety, and the patient experience as a core competency of a hospitalist role, healthcare organizations need to actively engage them, including providing support for their time to lead these efforts.”
Richard Quinn is a freelance writer in New Jersey.