The next frontier in patient safety is the handoff, from ambulatory to hospital and back, but also with long-term care, which is a black box. An enlightened and energetic hospitalist movement could decide to take that issue on.
Where it would happen is at the community level, although some of the healthcare reform legislation includes ideas about innovation zones and how to create payment mechanisms to support continuity of care. TH
Larry Beresford is a freelance writer based in Oakland, Calif.
References
- Kohn LT, Corrigan JM, Donaldson MS, et al. To Err Is Human: Building a Safer Health System. Washington, D.C.: National Academies Press, 2000.
- Institute of Medicine Committee on Quality Health Care in America. Crossing the Quality Chasm: A New Health System for the 21st Century. Washington, D.C.: National Academies Press, 2001.
- Moser R. Diseases of Medical Progress: A Contemporary Analysis of Illnesses Produced by Drugs and Other Therapeutic Procedures. Springfield, Ill.: Charles C. Thomas, 1959.
- Reason, J. Human Error. Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press, 1990.
- Leape LL. Error in medicine. JAMA. 1994;272(23):1851-1857.
- United Kingdom Department of Health. An Organisation with a Memory. 2000.
- Jerrard J. No fee for errors. The Hospitalist. 2008;(5):18.
- Pronovost PJ, Berenholtz SM, Goeschel C, et al. Improving patient safety in intensive care units in Michigan. J Crit Care. 2008;23(2):207-221.
The Evolution of Patient Safety
Key milestones in the patient-safety and medical QI movement:
200 B.C. – Hippocrates, the Greek scholar and father of modern medicine, promulgates the concept primum non nocere, which translates to “first, do no harm.”
1910 – Ernest Codman, a Boston surgeon who loses his privileges at Massachusetts General Hospital for pushing his end-results system (known today as medical outcomes), establishes the “End Result Hospital” and helps found the American College of Surgeons’ Hospital Standardization Program. This program evolves into the Joint Commission.
1959 – Diseases of Medical Progress by Robert Moser argues that iatrogenic disease is both common and preventable.2
1980s-1990s – Various medical errors result in high-profile patient deaths, including that of Libby Zion at New York Hospital in 1984 and Betsy Lehman at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute in Boston in 1994. The deaths keep medical errors in the headlines.
1985 – The Anesthesia Patient Safety Foundation is established; anesthesiology is the first specialty to dedicate resources to preventing medical error.
1990 – James Reason’s Human Error describes his theory of error as systems failure.3 It is undiscovered by healthcare until …
1994 – … Lucien Leape’s article “Error in Medicine” is published in the Journal of the American Medical Association, drawing upon advances in error prevention from fields other than medicine.4
1999- The Institute of Medicine releases its landmark patient safety report, To Err Is Human.
2000 – The National Health Service in the United Kingdom releases another major medical safety report, An Organisation with a Memory.5
2001 – Congress establishes the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) to begin an aggressive patient-safety research and improvement program.
2001 – IOM releases a follow-up safety and quality report, Crossing the Quality Chasm.2
2002 – The Joint Commission releases its first National Patient Safety Goals.
2004 – The federal government creates the Office of the National Coordinator for Healthcare Information Technology to promote systems improvements in the medical industry.
2005 – The Institute for Healthcare Improvement’s 100,000 Lives campaign begins; it encourages hospitals to adopt basic steps to reduce harm and deaths.
2006 – The National Quality Forum issues its list of “never events,” 28 medical errors that should never occur in hospitals.6
2007 – Medical checklist research spearheaded by Peter Pronovost, MD, of Johns Hopkins University, including a patient- safety project involving all ICUs in the state of Michigan, is highlighted in a widely noted New Yorker profile and elsewhere.
2009 – The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act passes Congress and is signed by President Obama. It contains $19 billion for advancing healthcare information technology.
Source: Adapted from Wachter, R. Understanding Patient Safety (Lang Clinical Medicine), McGraw-Hill: 2007, Appendix III, Selected Milestones in the Field of Patient Safety, p. 280-281, which was adapted from sources including Vincent C. Patient Safety. London; Elsevier, 2006; and Sharpe VA, Faden AI. Medical Harm: Historical, Conceptual, and Ethical Dimensions of Iatrogenic illness. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1998.