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IHI: Time to Get Serious About Healthcare Quality, Costs
"The first physician who came in to Bill's room said 'Bill, take a lot of pain medication. Because that will allow you to get up and walk, and the more you walk the earlier you'll get home.'
"The next physician came in said 'Don't take a lot of pain medication because your colostomy won't work.'
"The next physician came in and said 'I think you should eat as much as you can.' And then the nurse came in and said, 'You're N.P.O,' and took the tray away.
"So all day long Bill was confused," Bisognano said. "He never had a plan for the day. And he never knew when his discharge would be until the very hour he was discharged. Each individual professional was managing his symptoms from their own knowledge, but there was no sense of team, in that care was not designed around his needs.
"It was designed around the individual actions from the point of view of the professional."
This hospital obviously upset the wrong change advocate.
But maybe, just maybe, things are about to change.
- Patient Harm Data to Remain on Medicare's Hospital Compare Site
- CMS Seeks to 'Rapidly Reduce' Medicare Spending with $1B in Grants
- Quiet ORs Better for Patient Safety
- Hard-Nosed About Physician Teamwork
- Building a Better Healthcare Board
- Tavenner Confirmed as CMS Administrator
- Leapfrog Hospital Safety Scores 'Depressing'
- Case Study: Advance Care Conversations
- CMS Releases Hospital Pricing Data
- Esther Dyson's Population Health Dream
Comments are moderated. Please be patient.
knowwareman (12/13/2012 at 4:19 PM)
According to Press Ganey, ED Length of Stay is four hours, unchanged for a decade. In 1999, To Err is Human alarmed the public with 99,000 preventable deaths a year. Now that we are better at tracking, we know the number is more like 400,000 per year. The IOS says there's $750 Billion in preventable expense every year. And the Wall Street Journal says if we could eliminate that cost it would cut the U.S. deficit in half. In general, Health Care has been admiring the problem of sluggish, error-prone patient care hoping it will go away. It has not. Aggressive application of the Magnificient Seven Tools of Lean Six Sigma would move most healthcare organizations from 3-to-5 sigma in 18-24 months.