Developing and sustaining a system that delivers high-quality care is one of the biggest challenges that hospitals face in this era of the new healthcare law.
With so much focus and energy being given to the politics and technology surrounding these changes, lawmakers have forgotten about one aspect of healthcare that is more important: Are patients getting the best possible care? Fortunately, at the local level, hospitals administrators and organizations dedicated to patient safety have not forgotten about providing high quality care.
According to an article by Steve Sternberg (Are Safety-Culture Surveys a Window Into Patient Safety?) more hospitals are conducting internal surveys to determine how the organization's culture is helping or getting in the way of patient safety.
Some of these surveys include Safety Attitudes Questionnaire (SAQ) and the Hospital Survey on Patient Safety Culture.
In various surveys given by the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ), there have been many complaints from health care providers - nurses complaining about a lack of a blame-free environment, problems with organizational commitment to improving safety, and poor teamwork and communication.
All of these can be linked to why the U.
S.
healthcare system experiences so many instances of medical errors.
Surveying healthcare providers and pinpointing issues within the organization is one thing, but implementing a plan to improve the safety culture is another thing.
When you're dealing with large organizations, there are many opinions about what should or shouldn't be done to improve patient safety.
And even if measures are taken to address cultural issues, it may be difficult to prove whether or not they are effective at reducing medical errors.
As with any big changes that need to occur, the only way to experience improvement is to first make small, incremental changes.
Conducting surveys do help as it gives organizations a clearer understanding of what the most common issues are.
Each person affected by the changes to improve must make a commitment to take an active role in implementing these changes.
Everyone has to be on the same page and a conscious effort to turn bad habits into good has to be made.
To improve patient safety, you certainly want to start with surveying the health care providers within an organization, however, let's not forget about surveying patients too.
After all, they are the ones receiving the care.
This will give you a better overall sense of where the organization is - externally and internally - when it comes to safety.