Joint Commission Launches Center for Transforming Healthcare

• 9/10/2009
• Author: Jim Parker
• Category: Perspectives on Patient Safety Blog
• 9960 Views
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Most health care organizations have come to recognize that medical errors are most often the result of a breakdown in a system.  In many cases, several system failures contribute to a single incident of patient harm. Along the way in those cases, multiple opportunities are missed for someone to notice the breakdown and prevent the error.
 
To address patient safety problems at their root, The Joint Commission has initiated a major collaborative effort with a number of hospitals and health systems throughout the United States. This effort, called The Center for Transforming Healthcare, is setting out to identify the system causes of medical errors and find workable solutions. Its ultimate mission is to transform the health care system into a high-reliability industry. As a first step, the center’s first task will address the issue of hand hygiene. This effort could help prevent many of the health care–associated infections that cause nearly 100,000 deaths annually in the United States. Future projects will address breakdowns in patient handoffs, other aspects of infection prevention and control, patient identification errors, and medication errors.
 
To date, eight leading hospitals and health systems have pledged to work to find systemic solutions to this complex problem, using Robust Process Improvement™ (RPI) tools. RPI is a set of strategies, tools, methods, and training programs adopted by The Joint Commission and Joint Commission Resources for improving business processes. The RPI tool kit includes methodologies that have been proven effective in many sectors, including health care, and have been used to achieve dramatic improvements in quality and in cost. These methodologies include Lean Six Sigma, Change Acceleration Process (CAP), and Work Out.
 
Click here for more information on the Center and its projects.
 
I look forward to sharing more information with you about the Center’s work as it becomes available. In the meantime, I would like to hear from you. What are your suggestions for improving hand hygiene? Why does this continue to be a problem in our health care system?