Twelve thousand patients die a year from preventable causes, a recent study conducted in the U.K. found. Now an $8.9 million grant will allow Johns Hopkins’ Armstrong Institute for Patient Safety and Quality try to put a stop to that.
Studies show that, nationally, one in five patients is harmed during hospitalization and roughly 60 percent of those cases are preventable. In addition, with the right technology and systems in place, millions spent on patient readmissions could be avoided.
Part of a new $500 million, 10-year program designed to eliminate all preventable harm that patients experience in the hospital, this grant will specifically focus on intensive care units, with the goal of preventing harm by better engaging patients — and their families — in their own care, “making them an integral part of the health care team,” according to a statement.
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A systems engineering approach to healthcare, will be deployed, using technology and better processes to ensure patients always receive the therapies and treatments they need and that clinicians work as effectively and efficiently as possible.
“Despite heroic efforts by clinicians, patients continue to suffer preventable harm, in large part because health care is grossly under-engineered: Devices don’t talk to each other, treatments are not specified and ensured, and outcomes are largely assumed rather than measured,” the institute’s director, Peter J. Pronovost, M.D., Ph.D., said. Pronovost is senior vice president for patient safety and quality at Johns Hopkins Medicine.
“This project will seek to change that by enlisting systems engineers to ensure patients always get the treatments they should, by engaging patients in every aspect of their care and creating a health care system that continuously improves,” he added.
“In a typical intensive care unit, each medical device completes a specific task, but are not able to relay information to related devices or computers,” reports stated. Pronovost compared the modern ICU to a machine in which all the individual pieces work properly, but don’t work together to complete the larger task.
Provonost’s team will work together to find a system that integrates all medical devices so they can “talk” to each other. Additionally, patients will be given iPads and other tablet devices to follow how their providers are caring for them and to communicate with them through video conferencing.
Edited by
Brooke Neuman
