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Since the release of the landmark 1999 Institute of Medicine's To Err Is Human report, the issue of patient safety and medical errors has been "front and center" on the national health care stage. Last year, in an unprecedented effort to improve patient safety, over 3,000 hospitals (representing 75% of the nation's hospital beds and 80% of all admissions) joined the 100,000 Lives Campaign, championed by the Institute for Healthcare Improvement (IHI). The goal of the nationwide campaign was to reduce medical errors in U.S. hospitals that lead to an estimated 100,000 lives lost each year. CHE emerged as a leader in this campaign. Designated as a campaign "node", the CHE System Office focused on communicating and sharing campaign information, learnings, and best practices among our RHCs/JOAs and the IHI. All CHE RHCs and JOAs have participated in the campaign; each facility selected one, some, or all six interventions identified as having the most impact on patient safety. These six interventions are: deploying Rapid Response teams; improving care for acute myocardial infarction; preventing adverse drug events; reducing surgical site infections; preventing central line infections; and preventing ventilator-associated pneumonia. As a System, CHE approached the campaign as an opportunity for collaboration, holding learning sessions and action periods over the course of the past year. At CHE's June Patient Safety Collaborative learning session held in Philadelphia, Diane Denny, CHE's Vice President of Quality and Patient Safety, shared some exciting news about CHE's team achievement. "The national effort's campaign goal was to save an additional two lives per one thousand patients through the implementation and adherence to several patient safety initiatives," said Denny. "CHE statistics show that, since the inception of this effort, our hospitals have succeeded in saving an additional four lives per thousand patients. Our results are not typical of the experience across the country. CHE facilities embraced the challenge to make needless harm preventable, and coupled it with will, good ideas for change, and a solid execution strategy." "This is an outstanding accomplishment. I'm proud of the collective efforts of our team members," said Tom Garthwaite, MD, Chief Medical Officer of Catholic Health East. "The challenge to all of us is to assure that all six of these proven interventions are consistently and permanently in place throughout our health ministry. In building an infrastructure of people and practice around our Patient Safety Clinical Collaboratives including the 100,000 Lives Campaign, we are increasingly ready to sustain and expand our improvement efforts system-wide. We look forward to working with our quality leaders and champions throughout CHE to demonstrate industry leading performance in the areas of quality and patient safety." Our hospitals and colleagues have accomplished much in a relatively short period of time. We DOUBLED our patient safety goal, as well as the national goal. Yet, as we all know, the quality journey is far from over. Just last week, another Institute of Medicine report, Preventing Medication Errors, was released; it provided detailed information about this specific problem, noting that medication errors alone harm an estimated 1.5 million people and result in the deaths of thousands each year in the United States. CHE hospitals have been leaders in the battle against medication errors. Two of our hospitals (Our Lady of Lourdes Medical Center in Camden, NJ and Saint Joseph's Hospital in Atlanta, GA) were at the forefront in piloting medication bar code administration systems. The results have been so promising that the CHE Board of Directors approved a resolution calling upon all CHE hospitals to implement bar code technology within the next couple of years, and capital dollars and plans have been approved to help make this a reality throughout our health ministry. While there is much more to be done, I am very proud of the great strides that our health care facilities have made to address this critically important issue. Special thanks to the CHE Department of Quality and Patient Safety for leading and facilitating this effort system-wide, and to the CHE Patient Safety Clinical Collaborative members who have contributed their time and talents to make a real difference for our patients and their families. Together, we continue our mission of being a transforming, healing presence in the communities we serve.
Sincerely yours,
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