Monitoring patient safety.
The opportunity to improve patient safety is significant and the pressure to improve it is increasing. An approach to evaluate an organization's progress with patient safety efforts has not been clearly articulated, and existing efforts to monitor safety are likely inadequate. We present a framework to monitor patient safety, combining valid rate-based measures to evaluate outcomes and processes of care, and non-rate-based measures to evaluate structure and context of care. We present an example of how the safety scorecard from this framework is used to monitor patient safety at The Johns Hopkins Hospital and in over 150 ICUs in Michigan, New Jersey, and Rhode Island.
Berenholtz
Sean M
SM
Department of Anesthesiology and Critical Care Medicine, Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, 1909 Thames Street, 2nd floor, Baltimore, MD 21231, USA. sberenho@jhmi.edu
Pronovost
Peter J
PJ
D019985:Benchmarking; D006801:Humans; D007362:Intensive Care Units / Q000592:standards*; D008485:Medical Audit; D019300:Medical Errors / Q000517:prevention & control*; D015279:Organizational Culture; D010043:Outcome and Process Assessment, Health Care; D019984:Quality Indicators, Health Care; D017751:Safety Management