The Culture of Safety
“You can’t manage quality and safety. It must be inspired.”
By Denny Angelle
O
ne morning this past April, the world came knocking at The Methodist Hospital’s front door for a bit of cultural exchange. As the symposium opened early that morning, representatives from more than 100 hospitals and health care institutions from around the globe sipped coffee and hoped to get a taste of Methodist’s famed culture of quality patient care and safety. Why Methodist? Perhaps because The Methodist Hospital received top rankings last year for quality and accountability from the University Health System Consortium, an organization of U.S. academic medical centers and hospitals. Methodist ranked No. 2 in patient satisfaction and No. 5 in mortality rates. And
perhaps because Methodist has a reputation for not settling for even those kinds of numbers — the bar can always be raised a bit higher. Mary Daffin, a member of the board of directors and chair of the board’s Quality Committee, gave some insight on the reason for Methodist’s success on the quality front. “Leadership at the highest level of this organization is committed to creating a culture of safety here at Methodist,” Daffin told attendees. And she quoted board chairman, Judge Ewing Werlein Jr., who directed, “Make Methodist the safest hospital in the world.” Quality is the most important word in hospital care today. It means keeping patients safe while they are in
the hospital. It means living up to the most basic concept of medical care: First do no harm. This is a 180-degree turn from the state of hospital safety from only 10 years ago. In 1999, an Institute of Medicine safety report assessed the quality of care hospital patients received around the country, and what they found wasn’t good. Their research showed that as many as 100,000 deaths occurred annually due to medical errors. The report also uncovered 1.5 million people who were injured by medication errors. These shocking statistics served to erode the public trust, to be sure, but hospitals recommitted to make quality and safety an integral part of the their mission.
VOLUME 5, NUMBER 2
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