Paul Levy full time blogger, part time hospital CEO, is unique in his drive to bring transparency to his hospital organization. His safe care practices are revolutionizing hospital quality. In these safe care videos below, he describes efforts at his hospital to improve the quality and safety of care by holding his hospital system accountable in the eyes of the public. It really is a radically new way of doing business. I think it's great. I would love to practice in an organization that takes a proactive effort to make their care safe and accountable. The inertia of change in medicine is slow. It's the culture of care that makes all the difference in the world. Taking pride in the work that you do makes all the difference in the world.
Take for example hand washing. What if you had 5,000 people in your organization who had access to patients? What if you had a reliable way to measure how compliant each individual was with their hand washing and then published their data for the world to see? That's how you make safe care an automatic part of the culture. If Dr Smith, the surgeon, was only noted to wash his hands 5% of the time, he may lose business and the hospital may lose business and he would surely be mocked by his peers for unsafe care. If Mr Smith washed his hands 100% of the time, he may have patients flock to him and the hospital and his peers would compete for his great safe care numbers. The key is to set up systems processes that encourage quality care on an individual basis and everyone will succeed. See Paul Levy's take below on a variety of issues.
