March 2015

 

Welcome to the early days of Spring and the latest issue of The Clarity Post!

 

Spring is that time when the seeds we've planted have the opportunity to take root and blossom, and coming off the heels of another successful Patient Safety Awareness Week, I think this is an appropriate analogy: In today's changing and complex healthcare settings, the "seeds of change" come in the form of increased awareness of issues affecting patient care, services configuration to deliver care, and efficiency and coordination of that service delivery. The changes themselves take root and blossom in the form of new ways to improve collaboration among healthcare providers, leading to measurable quality and safety enhancements for patients, visitors and staff. But the water, which nurtures these changes, requires continuous monitoring and encouragement. In our world, this begins with honest and dynamic internal transparency, so that any data gathered can effectively help drive the changes that are needed.

 

We hope that this edition of The Clarity Post provides valuable content and resources to help drive these changes and plant the seeds for new ideas at your organizations. We also are introducing our new Blog and invite you to visit it often! 

 

Anna Marie Hajek

President & CEO

Clarity Group, Inc.


Healthcare Hot Topics
Still Thinking about Patient Safety Awareness Week?

In case you missed it, the theme of NPSF's Patient Safety Awareness Week, which was held March 8 - 14, was "United in Safety." This year's campaign focused on patient engagement and emphasized the importance of relationships between providers and among providers and their patients.

 

Even though the annual campaign is over, the theme of the week rings true year-round. Here are a few resources to share with your patients and colleagues to keep the message alive. 

 

For Healthcare Professionals:

For Patients:

Improving the Physician Sign Out Process

 

Shift changes in the hospital setting are a point of risk because important information can be easily missed or misunderstood as patients are handed off to incoming staff. This risk is heightened even more in the emergency setting due to the constant state of urgency.

 

To address the risks in the handoff process and to improve patient safety, a team of emergency providers developed Safer Sign Out (SSO), a template that prompts clinicians to jointly review patient information at the end of a shift. While this tool was initially developed for the emergency department, it can be applied to other clinical settings.

 

Read our overview of SSO to learn more about the process and its key components.

 

Creating a Culture of Safety

Over the years, more and more emphasis has been put on creating effective safety cultures in healthcare organizations to improve patient safety and staff satisfaction. An effective safety culture uses a proactive approach to preventable harm and is based on transparency, communication and mutual trust among staff and leadership; while this is something we all want, it is not always easy to do.

To help organizations create positive cultures of safety, the following are educational materials and resources related to this topic.
The following are additional resources to help you in your journey from preparation to sustainment.
Infection Prevention Webinar

 

Clarity recently hosted the webinar, Infection Prevention - Are You Doing Enough? During the  webinar, our speaker discussed the current state of infection prevention, ways you can assess your infection prevention risk exposures as well as the growing need for more infection prevention strategies outside the hospital.

 

Listen to the recording.

 

Patient Safety Organizations
Clarity PSO Learning Series: Medications and Secondary IV Piggybacks

 

Clinicians routinely administer medications and fluids to patients through an IV, and it is not uncommon for patients to receive multiple IV infusions at once. While receiving multiple IV medications and fluids is an important part of care, with this practice comes more risks and the potential for more errors.

 

In this issue of the Clarity PSO Learning Series, we discuss medication events related to secondary infusions and provide possible interventions to prevent future errors from occurring.

 

Read the report to see what we learned and for our recommendations.

Lessons Learned from PSO Court Cases

 

Last month, Clarity PSO hosted a webinar on the current legal issues affecting the PSO program. Court cases, including a recent one on the disclosure of an incident report in a medical malpractice lawsuit, have raised many questions about the interpretation of the Patient Safety Act. The webinar discussed this most recent case and legal strategies healthcare providers need to think about when participating in a PSO.

 

Read a couple of lessons learned from the court cases.

 

PSOs - The Basics

Still not sure what a PSO is? Here are a few resources to help break down the PSO program and demonstrate its benefits to the healthcare community.

Clarity Spotlight
We Launched Our New Blog!

 

We'd like to introduce you to the latest voice of Clarity, the Healthcare SafetyZone® Blog . For us, this blog represents our commitment to use every avenue possible to share education and to foster discussion around the subjects of healthcare and patient safety. Healthcare is a dynamic industry, but patient safety must remain top of mind regardless of the setting or provider involved. Follow us for news, information, education and everything risk-quality-safety related. Enjoy!

 

The Captive Risk Management Triad™

 

Clarity recently completed its 3-part report,  The Captive Risk Management Triad™.  As we discuss in the report, the formation of a captive insurance company can be a great way of controlling costs because it places a larger emphasis on patient safety. The key to a successful captive is performing the functions of Underwriting, Risk, Quality and Safety Management, and Claims Management well, and in this report, we break down each of these areas to help you create an integrated patient safety management strategy. 

Even if your focus is not on a captive, read the report  to see how you can improve your organization's operations in each of these areas. 

 

A Success Story from Tallahassee Memorial HealthCare

 

We're excited to share with you our latest case study featuring Tallahassee Memorial HealthCare (TMH), a 772-bed, non-profit, multi-specialty academic medical center serving North Florida and South Georgia.

 

TMH uses the Healthcare SafetyZone® Portal, our cloud-based incident reporting system, for all of their patient safety and event reporting needs. Due to the flexibility of the system, TMH has been able to go far beyond simple reporting and transform many of their reporting, education and safety processes into automated electronic processes, accessed system-wide.

 

Read the case study to learn about TMH's success with the Portal.

 

Upcoming Events

HIMSS Annual Conference

Booth #7759
April 12 - 16, 2015
Chicago, IL 

NPSF Patient Safety Congress
Booth #702
April 29 - May 1, 2015

Austin, TX
ASCA 2015
Booth #225
May 13 - 16, 2015
Orlando, FL
Clarity Group, Inc. | 773-864-8280 | info@claritygrp.comwww.claritygrp.com 

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