The Exec: New CMO Places Premium on Patient Safety

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By Christopher Cheney

Patient safety involves multiple facets, and it should be among the top priorities at health systems and hospitals, according to the new CMO of Oswego Health in New York.

Wajeeh Sana, MD, was announced as CMO of Oswego Health in early July. He has worked at the nonprofit health system since 2013. At Oswego Health, he has served as medical director and chairman of Oswego Hospital’s emergency department and president of the Oswego Hospital medical staff.

Oswego Health takes a comprehensive approach to patient safety, Sana says.

For example, the health system uses two factors to identify patients. First, the organization performs medication safety. Second, Oswego Health conducts infection prevention, fall prevention, and suicide prevention, as well as calling a timeout before surgical procedures to make sure surgeons are performing the correct surgery on the correct patient.

The most recent patient safety initiative launched at Oswego Health is for fall prevention.

“We have developed comprehensive policies around fall prevention,” Sana says. “Right now, we are in the process of providing education about fall prevention and implementation of the policies to our staff.”

An essential element of the fall prevention initiative is identifying patients who are at high risk.

Sana developed a keen understanding of physician engagement during his time as president of the Oswego Hospital medical staff, and he says there are four essential elements of physician engagement.

“First, you need clear communication with your physician leaders. Second, you need to value their input and their time because we all know how busy physicians are,” Sana says. “Third, you should assign physician champions for different projects in your organization. Fourth, organizational support is important as well as rewarding the efforts of physicians.”

CMOs should use a targeted approach when selecting physician champions, according to Sana.

“We look for leaders in their fields,” Sana says. “These include medical directors and experts in their fields.”

Having a clinical background in emergency medicine and serving as medical director and chairman of Oswego Hospital’s emergency department helped prepare Sana to serve in the CMO role.

“In serving in an emergency room, you are a gateway to the hospital,” Sana says. “You have patients coming in from primary care offices and consultants’ offices.”

“I was the emergency medicine medical director for 12 years,” Sana says. “I managed multiple physicians and advanced practice providers. I was in contact with hospital leadership. In the emergency room, your role is to work with all consultants. So, I developed a good relationship with our medical staff, which makes my job as CMO easier.”

Mirroring a national trend, recruiting physicians and other healthcare workers is the biggest challenge at Oswego Health, according to Sana.

“We have staffing challenges in primary care as well as specialty care such as in gastroenterology, neurology, and nephrology,” Sana says. “We have done significant outreach and tried to hire more primary care doctors and the primary care practices have expanded over the past few years.”

A couple of strategies adopted by Oswego Health have been successful in the recruitment of primary care physicians, according to Sana.

“We want primary care physicians to choose us as a place to work,” Sana says. “We have concentrated on the quality of our primary care, so physicians want to work for us. We have also recruited physicians who have ties to our area.”

For healthcare workers in general, Oswego Health has concentrated on building a strong human resources pipeline, starting as young as ninth grade, according to Sana.

“We have an early college health sciences program and have just graduated our first cohort,” Sana says. “Through partnerships with our local community college, students come to our hospital and shadow multiple departments, including laboratory services, radiology, and finance.”

The health system also has a robust tuition assistance program, according to Sana.

Christopher Cheney is the CMO editor at HealthLeaders.