“What I believe really matters” – Partnering with Patients for Best Outcomes

“What I believe really matters,” my patient said to me, and she was right. It took me a while to get it, but when I did it opened a new frame of reference on quality and safety and achieving desired outcomes. Medicine today can provide more good and yet simultaneously do more harm than ever before. Understanding this modern healthcare conundrum is essential to achieving best outcomes while avoiding harm.

By Daniel L. Cohen, MD, FRCPCH, FAAP

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New SAFE CARE Program to Provide Patient Education at Bedside

Encouraging patients and their families to take an active role in their health care by becoming involved and informed is critical. In celebration of Patient Safety Awareness Week, March 4-10, a unique patient safety education program will be released to provide patients and their families with instant access to current patient safety videos at their bedside and while receiving care. The 2012 SAFE CARE Patient Safety Education Program, is a free offering developed to assist health care organizations in educating patients to help prevent medical errors.

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Cautious Patient Foundation Launches Program to Help Patients Remember Medical Instructions and Improve Outcomes

Houston—The Cautious Patient Foundation announced a new national program designed to help patients remember their doctors’ medical instructions. Known as “Your Doctor’s Advice” (YDA), the program provides an easy-to-use, high-tech solution to a major contributing factor in patient noncompliance and poor medical outcomes.

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Editor’s Note: Partnership for Patients

The Partnership for Patients is an ambitious national initiative launched recently by the Department of Health and Human Services to improve the safety, quality, and affordability of healthcare in the United States. The National Priorities Partnership (convened by the National Quality Forum) is presenting a series of webinars to “discuss strategies for getting started and sustaining meaningful execution of change.” The series features national thought leaders and experts in patient safety.

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Partnership for Patients: Better Care, Lower Costs

April 12, 2011Doctors, nurses and other health care providers in America work incredibly hard every day to deliver the best care possible to their patients. Unfortunately, an alarming number of patients are harmed by medical mistakes in the health care system and far too many die prematurely as a result. The Obama Administration has launched the Partnership for Patients: Better Care, Lower Costs, a new public-private partnership that will help improve the quality, safety and affordability of health care for all Americans.

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Consumers as Partners

Consumers as Partners

How Patient-Provider Engagement Can Transform Patient Safety

How would the world change if, suddenly, clinicians had a highly motivated partner in carrying out each care plan? I propose that a new level of safety will be possible if we shift to a shared care plan model, with patients and families aware of the plan and engaged in its execution.

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Consumers as Partners

Consumers as Partners

Empowering Patients and Families to Call for Rapid Response

Engaging patients and families as integral members of the healthcare team is an essential step in delivering high-quality, safe patient care. One approach for empowering patients and families being implemented in hospitals nationwide is to invite them to activate rapid response teams (RRTs) if patients show signs of physical deterioration or something doesn’t appear “quite right” with the patient.

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Patient Engagement in Patient Safety: Barriers and Facilitators

Patient Engagement in Patient Safety: Barriers and Facilitators

 

Patient safety has been at the forefront of recent domestic and international policy initiatives. The release of the Institute of Medicine’s (IOM) 2000 report To Err Is Human solidified the patient safety movement and the role that leadership and knowledge can play in preventing adverse events from occurring.

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