We have staked our reputation on our ability to improve healthcare quality, and we need to deliver, according to incoming SHM President Shaun Frost, MD, SFHM, who addressed hospitalists this morning at HM12 in San Diego. Such care delivery will require personal accountability to embrace the work necessary to realize the potential of HM.
As Lou Holtz, the former Notre Dame head football coach, once said, “when all is said and done, a lot more is said than done.” Although always couched within a system, many current limitations with quality improvement and patient safety are rooted at the level of individual accountability. Dr. Frost pointed to hand hygiene and sign-out performance as tangible examples.
Key Takeaways:
- We are at a point in our profession where we need to define and enforce individual accountability for processes considered vital to good patient care.
- We need to all hold ourselves accountability for our ability to deliver genuine results.
Dr. Scheurer is physician editor of The Hospitalist