Patient safety culture and quality: The missing link

Summary

There is a direct correlation between safety event management practices and care quality outcomes. The right safety management tools, supported by a shared perception and tolerance of risk, will help organisations go beyond reporting event data to improve safety culture.

Content

The Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality’s (AHRQ) surveys on patient safety culture (SOPS) measure safety culture at an organisation. SOPS survey scores and key healthcare delivery outcome measures are significantly related.

Health system leaders understand the value of improving their patient safety culture. However, setting up for and acting on SOP survey results can be burdensome without the right tools.

The right tools should:

• Provide rich insights on the ‘Communication about Error’ area of the SOPS culture survey by using trained AI algorithms to rout events accurately and record event management.
• Be configurable to support the ‘Communication Openness’ area of the SOPS culture survey. Such configuration can aid in an iterative, Plan, Do, Check, Act strategic approach to safety and quality.
• Allow seamless, transparent, and secure collaboration on patient safety events and the subsequent investigations to help with the ‘Response to Error’ area of SOPS culture.
• Provide insights on the frequency and the quality of the collaborations that occur and are measured on the ‘Teamwork’ area of the SOPS culture survey.

There is a direct link between safety event management practices and care quality. Hospital units with better SOPS survey scores demonstrate better performance on clinical measures of quality. The right tools, supported by a shared perception and tolerance of risk, will help organisations improve safety culture.

About the author

Kumar Subramaniam leads SafeTower, Inc., a patient safety event analytics company in the US. His work experience in healthcare spans product strategy, product management, and business strategy related to population health analytics, remote patient management, chronic illness management, and behavioural health solutions. Kumar has a bachelor’s degree in mechanical engineering, an MBA in entrepreneurship, and a doctorate degree in management. Kumar lives with his wife in Louisville, Kentucky, USA.