HPCI News: Des Moines Register on Patient Safety
To: Members and Selected Others
Last week the Des Moines Register ran two articles on patient safety:
Follow the links above to read the articles. Of special note, which is very telling, is the second paragraph of the second article above. If indeed the Iowa Health Collaborative “promoted the idea of we will do it our way and resist hospital system discussions of standardized definitions and electronic reporting of hospital acquired infection rates” is the case then it set Iowa way back in patient safety improvement. As the nurse who wrote the article said “these early efforts lost several critical years in developing science-based methods to reduce infections and now contributes to large hospital fines.”
Sounds like Iowa hospital systems are moving ahead to make improvements on their own. Good for them and for patients and their families.
Paul M. Pietzsch, MPH
HPCI - IHBA Office
4430 Ashley Park Drive
West Des Moines, Iowa 50265
(515) 778-6300