February 17, 2006

Commitment to quality and safety: MGH introduces new web-based Safety Reporting System

When the hospital completed a comprehensive strategic planning effort two years ago, the issues of quality and safety emerged as top institutional priorities. Since then, the MGH has dedicated significant time and resources to study and enhance its existing systems and infrastructure to better provide high-quality and safe patient care. This March, the MGH will introduce one of the most significant and visible outcomes of this work — a new web-based Safety Reporting System.

This new system will make significant strides to help support employees and staff in maintaining a safe environment for everyone — patients, families, visitors, employees and staff. It will transform one of the most important safety systems the hospital relies on — reporting safety concerns, problems and errors, or what the hospital refers
to as "incidents."

For many years, hospital employees and staff have used a paper-based
incident reporting system to "flag" a wide variety of incidents – from minor events such as accidental spills to more serious problems such a patient's adverse reaction to a medication.

"The MGH community boasts an active and healthy safety reporting culture," says Joan Fitzmaurice, RN, PhD, director of the MGH Office of Quality and Safety. "Having an active safety reporting system is critical for many reasons, most importantly to address immediate problems, find solutions to fix systems that can cause major problems and identify hidden trends to set priorities in our patient safety efforts."

While hospital leadership relies on this system to identify safety concerns, the current paper incident-reporting system can be slow and cumbersome. This new Safety Reporting System will streamline the way employees and staff report incidents of all kinds. It is a major Investment by the hospital to enhance communication and improve timeliness of follow-up and improvement measures.

" We hope this new system will encourage and empower staff to take action to help solve system problems," says Fitzmaurice. "Reporting problems or potential problems — large or small — is the right thing to do for staff, our patients and their families. This new reporting system will make it easier for staff to play an active role."

This new system is a product of the Quality and Patient Safety Task Force, led by Brit Nicholson, MD, MGH chief medical officer; Jeanette Ives Erickson, RN, MS, senior vice president for Patient Care Services and chief nurse; and Gregg Meyer, MD, medical director for the Massachusetts General Physicians Organization (MGPO). In the last two years, the members of the task force have been mapping a clear direction for the MGH and the MGPO on quality and safety issues as well as setting priorities for these efforts and integrating them into the hospital's culture.

"Individually and departmentally, we have always been concerned about the quality of care and safety of our patients," says Meyer. "In the past several years, many hospitals throughout the United States have refocused their commitment to quality and safety and enhanced the systems they have in place to support individuals and departments in maintaining high quality and safety in patient care. Our hope is to fully engage our hospital and care providers to help us lead the nation in
this area."

This system also will be used at other Partners hospitals as part of the Partners' five signature initiatives designed to improve quality, safety and efficiency of patient care throughout the Partners system. The web-based Safety Reporting System addresses signature initiative #2 to increase patient safety and reduce medical errors.