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Organizational and Cultural Change

Health care needs greater accountability, not excuses

Hand washing

I recently spoke to an executive in the energy industry who had a joint replacement at a hospital in New York. His wound developed an infection, which required four additional hospital admissions and several operations. He asked me about hand hygiene in hospitals. Proudly, I told him that, at Johns Hopkins Hospital, we are at 80 percent compliance with hand hygiene, up from 30 percent not that long ago. I focused on the improvement. He focused on the failures. "So," he said pointedly, "one in five times you do not comply with basic hand washing rules, potentially causing infections—or even death." He asked what we are doing about it.

I told him how we try to learn from the high performers and to improve the poor performers, how we train staff on the importance of hand hygiene, how we report compliance rates to unit teams, how we put pictures of patients with the words “please wash” outside their rooms.

The executive said, "All that is great, but where is the accountability?" In any other industry, there is accountability to ensure staff comply with safety standards, standards that are often much less consequential than hand washing. Other industries help staff improve compliance; they also hold local managers accountable for poor performance. To get results, you must both support staff and hold them responsible.

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Part II: ISO clinician leaders in patient safety and quality

studentsI recently gave a talk to the American Medical Student Association. The energy in the room was palpable. The students were excited, passionate and hopeful. We spoke about the urgent need to reduce preventable harm and to enhance value, and we discussed that they will need to be the ones to lead these efforts.

Yet, in speaking with them, I had to confront the sad reality that most of them will graduate ill-prepared to lead the improvements of quality and safety our health care system needs. They no doubt will know chemistry, biology and physiology, but they may not know about human factors, implementation science or performance measurement—the language of quality improvement. They will know orthopedics and genetics but they won't know teamwork and systems engineering. They likely know about German scientist Rudolph Virchow, the father of cell theory, yet they do not know John Kotter, the father of change theory whose model for leading change is highly effective and widely used. Without a doubt, these students will need to lead change.

Read More »Part II: ISO clinician leaders in patient safety and quality

ISO clinician leaders in patient safety and quality

SimulationWANTED: Clinicians for long-term relationship to lead unit and department safety efforts. Must be passionate about improving patient outcomes and value, have skills needed to lead these efforts, and enjoy working as part of a team.

Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., in pushing the civil rights agenda, spoke of the "fierce urgency of now." Recent news reports highlight the fierce urgency of now in health care. The U.S leads the developed world in preventable deaths, as preventable harm continues unabated, insurance premiums have increased 9 percent while GDP remains flat, and investments in health care are crowding out investments in other important areas such as K-12 education. The fierce urgency to improve health care value not only impacts patients and health care providers, but all of society.

There are two main reasons why progress in improving safety and quality has been slow and difficult. The first is the field has largely run away from science, seeking quick fixes rather than deep understanding, focusing on what we do rather than the results we produce. The second reason is that health care lacks the capacity (infrastructure with skilled people) to improve quality and value. Because we have treated patient safety and quality as a project rather than a way of life, we have failed to create the necessary infrastructure to support the needed quality efforts.

If we are to improve quality, we will need to create an infrastructure to support patient safety. It is not surprising that most of the published literature in quality and safety comes from units (such as intensive-care units) that have dedicated physician and nurse leaders; there is someone in place to closely manage the work. Research and experience shows that units with dedicated physician leaders have lower costs, higher quality and better patient satisfaction.

Read More »ISO clinician leaders in patient safety and quality