4th Annual SC Patient Safety Symposium
The Transformational Journey Continues
In March, more than 300 health care professionals, passionate about transforming health and health care in South Carolina, met to learn from local and national experts what they can do to move our state closer towards a healthier South Carolina. SCHA Chairman Jim O’Loughlin opened the 4th Annual South Carolina Patient Safety Symposium with a review of South Carolina hospitals efforts since last year’s conference.
O'Loughlin Reviews Progress Since First Symposium in 2008
SCHA Chairman Jim O’Loughlin kicked off the 4th Annual South Carolina Patient Safety Symposium by congratulating South Carolina’s health care community for its achievements toward reforming the state’s health care system since the first symposium in 2008. O’Loughlin, CEO of Carolinas Hospital System in Florence, reminded attendees that “We continue to be one of the top five states in the country for the number of STEMI heart attack patients receiving emergency cath lab intervention in less than 90 minutes; we have seen a 36 percent reduction in blood stream infections compared to a 21 percent reduction nationally; and 100 percent of SCHA member hospitals have implemented a patient/family trigger for the rapid response teams.” Read More
2011 Lewis W. Blackman Patient Safety Champion Awards
The Lewis Blackman Patient Safety Champion Awards were created in 2008 to recognize individuals who demonstrated exemplary dedication and leadership in advancing the quality and safety of health care for patients across South Carolina. The awards are named in honor of Lewis Blackman, a bright, talented 15-year-old who died in 2000 after an elective surgical procedure due to preventable medical complications. His mother, Helen Haskell, has provided inspiration for this award with her dedication to promoting patient safety and quality improvement across the state and the nation. It is the symposium sponsors' desire to use these awards as a way to celebrate the achievements of individual patient safety champions in South Carolina, establish a benchmark of excellence in health care quality and patient safety and inspire others to great deeds on behalf of patients and their families. Read More
Failure to Survive
A story of uniting a team to save the life of a patient told through dance.
To honor the Lewis W. Blackman Patient Champion Award recipients, Columbia’s Unbound Dance Company produced and performed a custom piece, Failure to Survive, during the annual awards luncheon. Unbound Artistic Director Caroline Lewis Jones worked closely with nationally recognized patient advocate Helen Haskell and the SCHA Quality and Patient Safety Team as she began to create Failure to Survive. Read More
Progress and Pitfalls 10 Years After "To Err is Human"
[Tonight], I will drive up to Charlotte and get on an airplane. I will know that the food is going to stink. I will know it will be uncomfortable. But I will have absolutely no concern that I will be harmed in the process of flying back to San Francisco. Today . . . there must be tens of thousands of patients checking into the hospital. They also know the food’s going to stink. They also know they’re going to be uncomfortable. But they are, I can guarantee you, scared that they will be harmed or killed in the process of getting care. I commend you on what you’re doing to fix that. I think we’ve made tremendous progress, but I think we still have a ways to go until they have the same feeling coming into your hospital as I will getting onto an airplane. Read More
Patients are Untapped Experts
Maureen Bisognano understands exactly what needs to be done to transform the current health care delivery system. Not just because she is president and CEO of the Institute for Healthcare Improvement, which created the Triple Aim approach to reforming health care. Not just because she has worked as both a nurse and a hospital CEO, responsible for developing a comprehensive quality improvement program at her hospital. Not just because she has worked closely with some of the most respected quality experts in the world. Her understanding and effectiveness comes largely from her passion for what she does and for those who rely on the health care system. Read More
Partnering to Change the Course of Health Care History
“You have created an amazing infrastructure for safety,” Maureen Bisognano, president and CEO of the Institute for Healthcare Improvement (IHI), told the attendees at the 4th Annual South Carolina Patient Safety Symposium, adding that it’s time to incorporate the Triple Aim approach into efforts to transform the system. The Triple Aim, developed by IHI, lays out a vision for reforming the American health care system through the simultaneous pursuit of three goals: improving the experience of care, improving the health of populations and reducing per capita costs of health care. Read More
No Surgical Procedure is Simple or Routine
A man is admitted to the emergency room on Halloween, after being stabbed at a party while celebrating a bit too enthusiastically. In the ER, everything seemed routine, the wound superficial – until the man’s blood pressure crashed. The trauma team managed to revive him and later learned that the stab wound had “gone more than a foot through the man’s skin, through the fat, through the muscle, past the intestines, along the left of his spinal column and right into the aorta, the main artery from the heart.” A routine stab wound? How had the knife plunged so deeply? It turns out that the medical team, despite doing almost everything right during the exam, forgot one crucial question. They forgot to ask the man what he’d been stabbed with. Read More
Organizing for Health: A Story Worth Telling
Everyone has a story to tell. And everyone loves a good story. That’s what makes storytelling such a compelling way to communicate – to convey a belief, a conviction, a mission. At the “Organizing for Health: A Story Worth Telling” session during the 4th Annual South Carolina Patient Safety Symposium, South Carolina health care leaders, along with members of the Organizing for Health team, told their own stories about experiences with the health care system, and how they were inspired to work to make it better. “We could be doing better,” said Rick Foster, MD, senior vice president of quality and patient safety at SCHA, pointing out that health status and economic issues are among the challenges South Carolina faces in its health care system. Read More
Safe Surgery 2015: What's to Come and Your Part In It
South Carolina’s hospitals have been charged with leading the nation on a mission that could potentially save thousands of lives in the next decade. Safe Surgery 2015 is a quest to have every hospital operating room in the United States using the safe surgery checklist successfully in less than five years. Being a leader always means taking on more responsibility. For South Carolina hospitals, that means accomplishing this by 2013. Read More
Creating Highly Reliable Hospitals
“If I bring my daughter to your hospital, I expect three things: don’t hurt her, heal her and be nice to her. If you hurt her, I don’t care that you eventually healed her and that you were nice to her,” Kerry Johnson told members of the South Carolina health care community at the 4th Annual South Carolina Patient Safety Symposium. “I’m not satisfied with our experience.” Exceptional care must include safety, along with quality and satisfaction. Unfortunately, in the past, hospitals have put more emphasis on healing and being nice than on preventing harm, he said. Safety isn’t just a priority. It has to be a core value on which other decisions are based. Read More
Tapping into the Human Side of Patient Safety
During the 4th Annual Patient Safety Symposium, health care administrators, physicians, nurses and other health care professionals came from across the state to learn from some of the most respected experts in patient safety and quality improvement. Of all the amazing speakers and compelling stories shared, none better addressed the underlying motivation of the symposium than a mother’s powerful account of the loss of her only child. Read More
A Walk on the Wild Side of Health Care
Every Patient Counts. It’s the mantra of health care professionals throughout South Carolina, including at least one dedicated group of professionals whose patients are real animals. On March 15, 2011, health care professionals from across South Carolina toured the Columbia Riverbanks Zoo and Garden as one of the pre-conference workshops for the 4th Annual South Carolina Patient Safety Symposium. Read More
The Southeast Regional IHI Open School Forum
Learning to Tell a Story of Self, a Story of Us, a Story of Now
As the 4th Annual South Carolina Patient Safety Symposium came to a close on March 17, the South Carolina IHI Open School leadership team launched the 1st Annual Southeast Regional IHI Open School Forum at the Marriott Columbia. With more than 385 students from diverse backgrounds and disciplines, this was the largest regional forum to date. Read More
