3Q's for QI | Q&A with Dr. Madeline Higgins
Aug 21, 2024
A recent editorial penned by Madeline Higgins, MD and IHQSE director Jeff Glasheen, MD and IHQSE faculty member Sarah Tevis, MD explores the challenges with current patient safety data. Despite advances in medical care, patient safety remains a critical area of focus within healthcare given that many patients continue to experience harm. While patient safety has gradually improved over time, progress is limited by outdated data models that prevent measurement of the true burden of harm, and therefore reduces our ability to understand ongoing drivers and develop innovative solutions to improving patient safety. The authors call for a change in how we measure and track data related to patient safety.
1. Tell us about your approach to this project?
We began understanding the history of patient safety by asking the question, “When did we first start to measure, or think about, patient harm in healthcare?” This obviously took us quite far back in history as patient safety has been important since the time of Hippocrates who uttered the famous words “first, do no harm.” Then, we looked critically at historical, and current trends in measuring patient harm combined with the limitations of current accepted practices and available datasets. Knowing these things allowed us to conjure what ideal datasets would be, where we might utilize them, and how we might incorporate them into clinical practice.
2. Why is this work important?
Patient safety affects everyone who receives and provides healthcare, and it has far-reaching impacts beyond the four walls of any hospital. Recent reports have found a 23.6% rate of adverse events in hospitalized patients with 7.5% deemed serious. While patient safety has gradually improved over the centuries, progress is limited by outdated data models that prevent measurement of the true burden of harm. This reduces our ability to understand ongoing drivers and develop innovative solutions to improving patient safety.
3. How do you think this will impact healthcare?
In our editorial, we advocate for the development of data models that provide accurate and timely measurements of harm for all patients, in all care settings, and for all organizations. This spans across the point where patient’s access care, who the patients are, and if the care is in the hospital or clinic. Ideally, we would have a fuller picture of where patients are receiving healthcare now and allow for comparisons to be made between settings. We also advocate for the outcomes to be connected to process measures that impact the harm, and the consequences of the harm so that the drivers and impact of the harm may be understood. Finally, we advocate that the data facilitate and enable clinicians to make necessary changes to eliminate harm. This will impact all areas of healthcare and will allow us to provide better care to patients overall.