Patients who suffer heart attacks, or flare-ups of congestive heart failure, can be cared for in a variety of hospital locations. But a new study led by Thomas Valley, M.D., M.Sc., a U-M pulmonary and critical care physician, suggests that they'll fare worse in hospitals that rely heavily on their intensive care units to care for patients like them.

In fact, depending on where they go, they may be half as likely to get certain proven tests and treatments ---- and less likely to survive a month after their hospital stay.

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Technical advancements and standardized practices have reduced patient deaths from preventable medical errors over the years. But errors are still responsible for between three and five percent of hospital deaths.

Amir A. Ghaferi, M.D., M.S., a surgeon and U-M Medical School assistant professor with a Michigan Ross School of Business appointment, wrote in the Harvard Business Review that the next wave of innovation in patient safety is organization. For hospitals, that means how they organize individuals and their day-to-day work in a way that optimizes highly-reliable performance. Ghaferi leads the Improving Rescue initiative at U-M, which includes a project that seeks to "build the ideal rescue system" by shedding light on how healthcare organizations can better organize their efforts to sense, cope with, and respond to the unexpected when it comes to surgical complications.

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