To improve safety, hospitals should make ‘radical transparency’ real — and accessible (20 May 2022)

Summary

Covid-19 may be receding, but it’s leaving a quiet menace lurking in hospitals in its wake.

In a Perspective essay in The New England Journal of Medicine, four senior physicians with the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention warned of a “severe” post-Covid decline in patient safety. The Association for Professionals in Infection Control and Epidemiology reached a similar conclusion, warning of a rise in “common, often-deadly” infections.

To help reverse this troubling trend, the federal physician leaders called for “promoting radical transparency.” 

In this article, Michael L. Millenson and J. Matthew Austin discuss how adapting the psychological principles of 'Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs' as an organising framework, paired with the principles of information design, can significantly boost both the use and impact of safety and quality information.

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