As health care leaders and providers, our ultimate mission is to provide safer care for all—but there’s a flaw in our system. Today, as many as 4 in 10 patients are harmed in primary and ambulatory health care settings, and up to 80 percent of this harm is avoidable. Patients should feel safe when they receive health care. Unfortunately, the pervasiveness of medical harm across all health care settings and disciplines—from diagnostic and medication errors to patient misidentification and avoidable complications—has eroded patients’ trust in U.S. health care systems.
Some medical harm can’t be avoided. When we talk about patient safety, the goal is to eliminate preventable harm. According to the World Health Organization, health systems can accomplish this by implementing a “framework of organized activities that creates cultures, processes, procedures, behaviors, technologies and environments in health care that consistently and sustainably lower risks, reduce the occurrence of avoidable harm, make error less likely and reduce impact of harm when it does occur.”
Data sharing drives improvement
Collaboration is key to advancing the mission of patient safety, and data sharing both within and across health care organizations is especially critical. Health systems house large swaths of data, but much of this data is locked in silos and ultimately goes unused. Liberating this data and making it accessible and actionable to staff across departments enables health systems to unlock new insights into the underlying drivers of preventable harm.
In health care, working within the confines of one’s data is like driving with blinders on. You can see what’s right in front of you, but you’re missing the critical information that’s just out of sight. And, when it comes to patient safety, access to this information can be lifesaving. This is why it’s so important for health systems to collaborate to aggregate patient safety data through a certified Patient Safety Organization (PSO).
PSOs collect and analyze data from participating health care organizations to drive improvements to health care safety and quality. Data reported receives confidentiality and privilege protections under the Patient Safety and Quality Improvement Act (PSQIA), enabling health systems to uncover insights into their patient safety data without fear of legal consequences. Aggregating data from multiple organizations helps PSOs identify patient safety patterns that would not be noticed when looking at one organization in isolation, enabling them to provide actionable feedback to organizations of all sizes. Eight out of 10 hospitals that work with a PSO say that the feedback they’ve received has helped them prevent future patient safety events, and nearly two-thirds report measurable improvements in patient safety.
The value of public-private partnerships
Public-private partnerships (PPPs) are a form of collaboration that can advance patient safety by leveraging the strengths of both sectors—public accountability and private sector efficiency and innovation. PPPs can accelerate technology innovation and research, enhance data sharing and analytics, optimize the development of standards and regulatory frameworks and more.
The Center for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) ‘s Partnership for Patients is a PPP that is working to improve the quality, safety, and affordability of health care for Americans. Through this initiative, private and federal partners worked to align policy and action to reduce preventable hospital-acquired conditions and readmissions at acute care hospitals. In three years, the Partnership for Patients achieved an 8.8 percent reduction in harm rates, preventing roughly 518,000 instances of patient harm and saving an estimated $4 billion. This is just one example of the results that can be achieved when we bridge the divide between the public and private sectors.
Partnerships with the technology sector also allow health systems to push forward innovation. Health care providers and health care technology companies draw on different experiences and strengths to address patient safety. Health care providers bring the invaluable experience of day-to-day work with patients and their families. Being on the frontlines of care, they have critical insight into the challenges impacting care safety and the solutions that are needed to address them.
On the other side, private health care technology companies are often at the forefront of technological advancements, developing innovative health care software, AI-based tools, and digital health platforms. They can leverage their extensive experience with building and implementing software solutions to address patient safety challenges within health systems.
By bringing together the innovation capacity of the private sector and the regulatory oversight and scale of the public sector, PPPs can create a health care environment that is better equipped to protect patients, reduce medical errors, and drive continual improvements in safety standards.
How to make partnerships a priority
Partnerships are crucial for any hospital or health system that is on a journey toward safer patient care. To get started, health system leaders should speak to staff at all levels and departments to gain insight into their day-to-day challenges and unmet needs. Gathering feedback from staff can help to ensure that any new technologies or processes implemented alleviate burnout and emotional exhaustion rather than adding to it.
Speaking with staff and analyzing previous patient safety incidents can also help health systems to identify the partnerships that will make the most impact. Using data from across departments, health systems can uncover the potential root causes of safety incidents and identify solutions or processes that may prevent similar incidents from occurring in the future. For example, you might identify that an optimized staffing solution could have prevented a medical error that occurred due to inefficient staff allocation. Once you’ve identified this, you should take your time doing research into the staffing solutions that are available on the market and choosing one that will integrate into your existing tech stack, make staff’s lives easier, and provide a return on investment.
Strategic partnerships across sectors will pave the way for safer, more empathetic patient care. By investing in patient safety through collaboration, health systems can positively impact health outcomes and restore their communities’ trust in health care.
Timothy McDonald is a physician executive.
