HNE Safety Initiative
HNE's Safety Initiative promotes safe health practices through education and dissemination of information for decision-making. Links are provided to assist you in finding this important information.

1. Information regarding how to determine the accreditation/certification status and if survey findings are available for HNE facilities. This information assists members and providers to make informed decisions about how to find high quality programs and services.

• Accreditation findings for hospitals: Joint Commission on Accreditation of Healthcare Organizations Quality Check Section
  http://www.jcaho.org/
• Accreditation information regarding health plans, medical centers, and clinical programs.
  http://www.healthchoices.org/
• Accreditation for Ambulatory Care Centers: Accreditation Association of Ambulatory Health Care.
  http://www.aaahc.org/accreditation/search.shtml
• Miscellaneous other types of certifications and Accreditation Organizations.
  http://www.hospitalconnect.com/aha/key_issues/patient_safety
  /accreditation/index.html

2. Information about national initiatives that are either a broad approach to decreasing medical errors or are focused studies and interventions such as reducing rates of central line infections in the ICU.

• One broad activity that has been widely reviewed and discussed is the Leapfrog Initiative. This program was initiated by the Business Roundtable, a collaborative of large purchasers of healthcare. This group worked with medical experts and has identified four key processes within hospitals that if implemented, are believed to reduce medical errors and negative outcomes. These processes are:
  
  • Computer Physician Order Entry - Reduces prescribing errors and delays in care.
  • Evidence-Based Hospital Referral - Identifies hospitals with extensive experience with certain high-risk surgeries and conditions and encourages patients to use this information in making decisions, and encourage practitioners to use this information in making referrals.
  • ICU Physician Staffing - Requires ICU trained specialists for the management of patients in Intensive and Coronary Care units.
  • Leapfrog Quality Index - Asks hospitals to self-report their status relative to practices that can have major impact on the safety of patients in healthcare settings.

Members and practitioners can access specific results from surveys http://www.leapfroggroupdata.org completed by hospitals that describe the progress an organization has made toward Leapfrog processes. If no information is available for a hospital this denotes that the organization has not completed the survey.

3. Links to Web sites that offer printable member safety information and tools for medical practices that have been shown to decrease error potential.

• http://www.ahcpr.gov/consumer/pathqpack.htm
• http://www.vipcs.org/patients/index.htm
• http://www.npsf.org/html/resources.html
• http://www.hospitalconnect.com/aha/key_issues/patient_safety
  /accreditation/index.html

4. The following printable resources may be of interest to practitioners and health delivery organizations:

• Making Health Care Safer: A Critical Analysis of Patient Safety Practices
  http://www.ahcpr.gov/clinic/ptsafety/summary.htm
• Medical Errors: The Scope of the Problem
  http://www.ahcpr.gov/qual/errback.htm
• Reducing Medical Errors in Health Care: Fact Sheet
  http://www.ahcpr.gov/research/errors.htm
• Reducing and Preventing Adverse Drug Events To Decrease Hospital Costs
  http://www.ahcpr.gov/qual/aderia/aderia.htm

5. Information about significant quality improvement activities undertaken by facilities, medical groups and clinics.

• View organizations and providers which have received recognition from NCQA for excellent diabetes services and care:
  http://www.ncqa.org/physicianqualityreports
• Medical Error Reduction.com:
  http://www.medicalerrorreduction.com

6. Other national organizations such as the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) and the National Patient Safety Foundation (NPSF) are working toward decreasing errors through other approaches. The AHRQ Web site http://www.ahcpr.gov offers information about other safety studies and activities from various healthcare delivery settings on how to reduce errors. The NPSF Web site http://www.npsf.org/html/resources.html offers various printable resources, a safety bibliography and a speakers bureau.