Crossing the Quality ...Gorge?

Hi All!

I’m embarrassed to say that I had to look up the word “chasm” in the dictionary this morning.

I’m writing a case study about a medication administration assessment that my company just completed and I’m tying it back to the Institute of Medicine’s Six Aims for improving American Healthcare. I know all about the 1999 release To Err Is Human: Building a Safer Health System, the IOM report that brought tons of public attention to the crisis of patient safety in the United States. But, admittedly, I don’t really know much about the 2001, IOM follow up: Crossing the Quality Chasm: A New Health System for the 21st Century.

My first question: “What is a chasm?”

So, I look up “chasm” in the dictionary and it says “GORGE”. And its in all capital letters – like the actual meaning of the word GORGE isn’t enough, they must capitalize it as if to REALLY emphasize how LARGE this word and its meaning is. I feel like its screaming at me.

I slam the book shut and I’m not sure I want to know any more about the quality GORGE in American health systems. I have two young children, one who has been hospitalized twice for respiratory infections, and sometimes ignorance is bliss.

My second question: “If I ignore it, will it go away?”

You know the saying, “if I can’t see it, it can’t see me”? Yeah, well, unfortunately it doesn’t apply here. Because if we close our eyes, and ignore this problem, it doesn’t go away - it gets bigger and it becomes, well, a GORGE.

I can’t help but feel somewhat like a proud parent as I write this case study. The hospital that I am writing about has the courage to open its eyes and say, “we need to find out what we don’t know” and they hired us to sift through their individual GORGE, like an archeological dig, and we were able to come to them with the truth and some very simple ways they can address their most pressing issues around patient safety.

Like many hospitals around the country, they could have “closed the proverbial book” in hopes that the issues would simply go away. But, this hospital didn’t. They made it a priority to uncover their realities so they can implement the changes needed to support a deeper level of safety.

In the spirit of being “in the motherhood”, I’d like to give them some positive feedback so they keep leading the way to high quality care. In the meantime, I’d like to encourage other institutions to look at their own “chasm”. And maybe the next IOM report can read, “Crossing the Quality Bridge: How American Health Systems Made the Safety Connection”.

I believe in my work.

Claire

Hi Everyone!

I hope it doesn't look too self serving that I blog about my job and what services my company offers. Believe me, it is more than trying to promote what we do. I am one of the few lucky people who actually believes in her work. If I am going to spend hours away from my children everyday, it better be doing something that I am passionate about.I really feel that everyone needs to be passionate about patient safety. Everyone, at some point, will be a patient. Even caregivers are patients. So, isn't it in everyone's best interest to support any effort to make the care they receive the safest it can be? It is SO important that we all remember that this issue touches all of us.

I travel around to country gathering information from third-party organizations about patient safety and I work closely with AmerisourceBergen medication administration consultants to help promote some of the things the Company does to help hospitals implement process improvement techniques. So, over the next few months I will be blogging about what I learn and some of the important work my company is doing.

So to start, here is the new Web site we created around our process improvement solution.

http://bestmedicineforhealthcare.com/carerx

I encourage everyone to share this experience with me so we might all learn from each other. I believe in this work.

Best,

Claire