Seattle Post-Intelligencer Examines National Campaign To Reduce Medical Errors

Main Category: Litigation / Medical Malpractice
Article Date: 30 May 2005 - 0:00 PDT

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The Seattle Post-Intelligencer on Thursday examined a six-pronged nationwide initiative started in December 2004 to reduce avoidable "safety incidents" by encouraging "well-established safety measures through common-sense hospital procedures," such as adhering to accepted treatment guidelines. Since the 18-month campaign was launched by the Institute for Healthcare Improvement, 2,100 hospitals have joined. The campaign entails:

• Establishing "rapid-response teams" to evaluate patients immediately when patients' health begins to decline rather than waiting for an acute emergency;
  
  
• Ensuring all heart attack patients receive aspirin, beta-blockers, smoking-cessation counseling and other preventive treatments;
  
  
• Creating a formal process to prevent harmful drug interactions through better medication record=keeping;
  
  
• Implementing a five-step process for inserting IVs to prevent blood stream infections;
  
  
• Properly shaving patients, administering appropriate antibiotics, and controlling patients' body temperatures and blood sugar levels to prevent surgical site infections; and
  
  
• Preventing ventilator-associated pneumonia by elevating patients' heads between 30 and 45 degrees, assessing daily whether ventilators are still needed, and taking steps to prevent ulcers and deep venous thrombosis.
  

Jonathan Sugarman, president of Washington state-based Qualis Health, said if the six steps are "reliably done, it will result in the prevention of deaths that (would) have otherwise occurred." IHI estimates the measures could prevent 100,000 hospital-caused deaths across the nation by June 2006 (Galloway, Seattle Post-Intelligencer, 5/26).

"Reprinted with permission from kaisernetwork.org kaisernetwork.org. You can view the entire Kaiser Daily Health Policy Report, search the archives, or sign up for email delivery at http://www.kaisernetwork.org/dailyreports/healthpolicy. The Kaiser Daily Health Policy Report is published for kaisernetwork.org, a free service of The Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation . © 2005 Advisory Board Company and Kaiser Family Foundation. All rights reserved.

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