Patient Safety: What will it take to move the needle?

The answer is in transparency, public reporting and collaboration.

During a recent Community Dialogue sponsored by the Buyers Health Care Action Group (BHCAG), four health care industry leaders discussed patient safety, including:

• Where we're at with efforts to improve patient safety.
• How Minnesota compares to national patient safety outcomes.
• What is needed to truly move the needle on this important issue.

Guest speakers included Leah Binder, CEO of The Leapfrog Group; Jennifer Lundblad, CEO of Stratis Health; Lawrence Massa, president of the Minnesota Hospital Association; and Dr. Phil Kibort, vice president of medical affairs and chief medical officer at Children’s Hospital. Between these four leaders, there exists a wealth of knowledge and experience in the area of patient safety. So, what did these thought leaders have to say on the subject? In short:

• We can't expect employers to continue paying for health care that is inefficient and of poor quality.
• In order for public reporting to work, the data must be meaningful to consumers and individuals must actively use the data that hospitals are reporting to decide where to receive care.
• Collaboration and communication are necessary if reporting efforts are to be successful.
• Patient safety is not a competition, but rather something that every hospital should achieve.
• Data reporting is essential to demonstrate the quality of care provided to patients.

Where we're at with efforts to improve patient safety

Our guest speakers agreed that, by and large, the health care industry has improved since the original Institute of Medicine report in 1999 that illustrated the impact to patients of poor patient safety efforts. Yet, we still have a long way to go. All hospitals need to make patient safety and public reporting a regular part of their workflow. Organizations like BHCAG and The Leapfrog Group continue to work with hospitals to make balancing the investment of resources that reporting often requires with the organization’s responsibility to care for patients.

How Minnesota compares to national outcomes

As for Minnesota, hospitals locally continue to score better than those in other states; however, our health care ranking is declining and we don’t see much improvement against the national average in many publicly reported measures. Minnesota hospitals need to re-engage with reporting tools like the Leapfrog Survey and re-energize their reporting efforts. The Leapfrog Survey reports on three key areas that are important to consumers: how patients fare in a particular hospital, the resources that hospital uses to care for patients, and hospital management practices that promote safety. When it comes to investing in reporting that consumers can actually use, the Leapfrog Survey effectively connects hospital performance with consumer information needs.

What will it take to move the needle?

At the risk of repeating myself, three things need to happen in order for patient safety to continue to improve:

1. All hospitals need to make patient safety a priority and commit to this effort on an ongoing basis.
2. Hospitals need to commit to publicly reporting the outcomes that are important to purchasers and consumers and to working with organizations like BHCAG and The Leapfrog Group to report their patient safety efforts.
3. We all need to work together to educate consumers about how to use public data to make decisions when receiving care and why this is such an important step in the process.

We all play a part in making our health care system safe. And, as the focus on health care costs and outcomes continues to intensify, now is the time to work together to create long-lasting improvements.

In the spirit of collaboration,

Carolyn Pare

President & CEO

Buyers Health Care Action Group