Customize safety efforts to fit hospitals' needs: Chassin

Healthcare has failed to achieve the reliable safety performance of other high-risk industries, such as airlines, and must be more aggressive in measuring and customizing quality improvement to address safety gaps, the head of a hospital accrediting body said at a meeting of Chicago healthcare executives.

“We see routine safety processes failing routinely,” Dr. Mark Chassin, president of the Joint Commission, told attendees on the final day of the American College of Healthcare Executives' Congress on Healthcare Leadership. To improve quality, hospitals need a commitment to eliminate avoidable harm from the governing board, management, and physician and nurse executives, he said. Hospitals should also promote a culture where safety is an obligation and rewarded.

Chassin urged hospitals to adopt process-improvement strategies.

Many factors can contribute to safety failures and they vary by organization, he said. Tailoring intervention to each organization's needs is the most effective and sustainable approach, he argued.

More than two dozen hospitals adopted a voluntary Joint Commission strategy to identify and address hand-washing safety lapses particular to each organization, he said, and the organization will announce later this year an effort with the American College of Surgeons to address surgical-site infections. He said a pilot program among seven hospitals identified 34 risk factors that contributed to preventable colorectal surgical-site infections. Intervention prevented an estimated 384 infections, he said, and saved a projected $10.6 million.

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