Julia Wright, MD, associate professor of medicine at the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health and medical director for hospital medicine at the University of Wisconsin Hospital in Madison, agrees.
“The expertise of our specialty is that we deliver care that is not just clinical, asking, ‘Did I meet the guidelines?’’’ she says. “We’re with patients. We should help determine how quality and safety models are addressing how care is delivered.”
She also believes hospitalists should work closely with hospital administrators on these issues. “Hospitalists have an intrinsic sense of value in delivering care,” she notes. “We are unique in that we can combine consideration of hospital goals with knowledge of care at patient levels. This provides great value to the institutions.”
Culture of Safety
While he agrees with the importance of involving hospitalists deeply in safety efforts, Dr. Kupersmith believes institutions should strive to create a culture that focuses on safety and looks at all its processes in that light.
“You shouldn’t just track hard outcomes,” he suggests. “Track the outcomes of your processes. This gives an overall sense of safety awareness in all personnel. If you focus on the process and culture, you might find a significant change in outcomes.” This also helps address the difficulty of finding data on outcomes, he says.
He agrees with the researchers’ view that safety is on a continuum, and he thinks acknowledging that can help establish an institutional culture around safety. “There is always going to be patient danger,” he says. “You want to get to a point where it is minimized because of an awareness of actions. That focus on safety will lead to less danger.”
As a result, he believes quality improvement strategies must address culture. “You need to provide education for all on safety and provide oversight and monitoring with expectations that can be tracked,” he says. “You need to create this mandate and speak in the quality language from the top. Then you start to have people bring in information that affects outcomes.” TH
Karla Feuer is a journalist based in New York.
Reference
- Pronovost PJ, Berenholtz SM, Needham DM. A framework for health care organizations to develop and evaluate a safety scorecard. JAMA. 2007;298(17):2063-2065.