Patient Safety Focus:
Ambulatory Patient Safety
BWH has long been a leader in error prevention and patient safety. BWH now
has the infrastructure in place to create the safest possible environment for
patients throughout BWH’s full spectrum of care by expansion of patient
safety team efforts to the outpatient setting.
Safety reporting has been the initial focus, with a new web-based safety reporting
system allowing ambulatory sites to report, trend and track safety related events.
Outpatient sites now have the ability to identify trends occurring in their
areas to further facilitate improvement efforts. In addition, through the hospital’s
centralized safety structure, information can be shared across and within practices.
Communicating critical test results has been a statewide patient safety collaborative
effort now incorporated into the JCAHO National Patient Safety Goals. The goal
is to assure timely and reliable communication of results to the person most
empowered to take clinical action. The patient safety team is helping to facilitate
best practice communication models in procedural and testing areas.
To gain better feedback from front-line staff in ambulatory areas, the patient
safety team will implement Patient Safety WalkRounds beginning early this year.
As in inpatient settings, WalkRounds will help foster a culture in which staff
feels comfortable talking openly about safety issues in outpatient areas.
If you have questions about our ambulatory patient safety program, please contact
Doreen Thomases, BSM, CPH, project manager, Quality & Patient Safety at
dthomases@partners.org, or Tejal
Gandhi, MD, director of Patient Safety at tgandhi@partners.org.