January 4, 2002

Two leaders of the quality and safety movement in health care recently visited the MGH to discuss with clinicians the future of the movement, as well as the need for systems to help ensure patient safety and access to quality care.

Jim Bagian, MD (left), director of the Veterans Administration (VA) National Center for Patient Safety, spoke Dec. 17 about the VA’s patient safety initiative, which is recognized nationally as one of the more successful efforts in the field. In his presentation — which was sponsored by the MGH Office of Quality and Safety — Bagian detailed the process the VA went through to institute a patient safety program. The program includes the creation of a confidential and non-punitive incident reporting system, the development of interdisciplinary review teams for incidents and a system that encourages reporting ‘close calls’ of potential errors for learning purposes.

Lucian Leape, MD (left), adjunct professor of health policy for the Harvard School of Public Health and a member of the Institute of Medicine’s Quality of Care in America Committee, spoke Dec. 20 about medical error prevention. Leape emphasized four important points in his presentation: Medical errors are a serious problem; medical errors are caused by bad systems; systems need to be redesigned to help prevent errors; and patient safety should be made a national priority.

Leape credited institutions such as the MGH for doing the front-line work to improve medical error prevention. "I have no doubt that 10 years from now, health care will be infinitely safer because of the work that you all are doing," he said. Leape’s presentation was a part of a grand rounds session that was sponsored by the MGH Gastrointestinal Unit.