Errors and Openness at Beth Israel Deaconess
Posted by steven_spear | Under Business Strategy Tuesday Oct 28, 2008Paul Levy and his colleagues at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center were profiled in the Boston Globe. They are on exactly the right track in calling out errors, and they are setting an example that should be emulated energetically at other hospitals. Delivering care requires coordinating harmoniously an extraordinary number of individual disciplines. This means anticipating myriad interactions of patient, provider, place, and circumstance, and anticipating perfectly all circumstances is impossible. However, by responding when things go wrong, those working in and responsible for care delivery processes can see their vulnerabilities, identify their causes, and rectify weaknesses, leading to ever improving efficacy, efficiency, and responsiveness. This is not a hypothetical assertion: Order of magnitude improvements in care have been recorded in Pittsburgh hospitals, at Ascension Healthcare and Virginia Mason Medical Center, and elsewhere. Those hospitals not pursuing the same degree of openness are not any less dangerous. They are simply not admitting the reality to themselves, their staff, and their patients.
Errors test openness at Beth Israel Deaconess (Boston Globe: October 27, 2008)
Hospital aims to eliminate mistakes (Boston Globe: January 18, 2008)
Paul Levy BIDMC blog
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