March 9-15 is Patient Safety Awareness Week!
· This week is an annual recognition event that is intended to advance both global and local discussions to improve the safety of the health care system both for patients and our workforce.
· Globally, about 10% of patients are harmed while receiving healthcare, and for about half of those patients the harm is preventable. Some studies suggest that between 250,000 to 400,000 deaths occur in the U.S. each year as a result of errors or preventable harm.
· A high reliability organization (HRO) is an organization that consistently performs safely and efficiently in high-risk settings. HROs balance safety and efficiency by ensuring a culture of safety – where we acknowledge that things can go wrong and as a result make plans and continuous improvements to mitigate risk .The principles of HROs apply broadly to healthcare organizations where we operate in complex situations and avoid serious failures by preventing harm from reaching our patients. Our St. Peter and Centralia hospitals are HROs, as part of our Providence Swedish system, and we strive to reach zero preventable harm through a culture of safety.
· Speak up for safety! Where to enter Patient Safety Concerns and Near Misses: Use this link to go to our High Reliability Platform (HRP) to enter your patient safety concerns (Press Ganey - Dashboard). Those of you with access to SharePoint can also get to our Puget Sound Safety site for access to HRP and other resources by clicking here (Olympia or Centralia). We want to be sure our physicians and APCs know how to enter patient safety events, near misses, and/or UORs into our Press Ganey HRP System for effective reporting and tracking of patient safety concerns.
Length of Stay: Good news and continued opportunities
· As of March 9, ALOS Acute for February at St. Peter Hospital is coming in at 6.17 days, which is the second lowest month we’ve seen for all of 2024 and 2025 year to date. Early in March we are trending somewhat high at 6.75 days … but there’s a lot more March to go!
· As of March 9, ALOS Acute for February at Providence Centralia looks to be higher in February, up from 4.49 days to 4.71 days – also with higher volumes than we saw in January. Additionally, March is trending higher than February only a few days into the month, at 5.08 days.
