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The Richard and Hinda Rosenthal Lectures 2005 Next Steps Toward Higher Quality Health Care (2006) / Chapter Skim
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Pages 18-24

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From page 18...
... The headline grabber was that among Americans with at least one medical condition requiring treatment, 34 percent reported a medical error in the past year or so, higher than in any other country. It won't surprise most of you to hear that that didn't surprise me, but what did surprise me was another finding that got much less attention.
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From page 19...
... I say, "we," but I mean mostly the National Quality Forum (NQF) , with help from the IOM and support from the Agency for HealthCare Research and Quality (AHRQ)
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From page 20...
... However, we have a lot more than we had five years ago, and so we are making some progress. The measure that is the most interesting to me and that probably most of you haven't heard about since it hasn't been published is the one that Ben Sachs and his colleagues developed to study the effect of team training in labor and delivery.
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From page 21...
... Peter and his team decided to see what they could do about preventing one particular kind of infection -- that associated with central venous lines, the plastic tubes that are put in the large vein for all kinds of treatments for patients who are very sick. Many patients in intensive care units, probably about 30 percent, will have them, and about 5 percent to 10 percent of patients will get infected and about 5 percent to 10 percent of the patients who get an infection will die from it.
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From page 22...
... First, this summer Congress, at long last after five years, passed the Patient Safety Act, which provides protection from discovery information about safety errors and adverse events that is shared across state boundaries and therefore escapes state peer review protection. The hope is that this will stimulate the development of reporting systems throughout the country that will improve our learning.
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From page 23...
... I remarked to George Isham earlier that I think it is such a shame that somebody with the talent and commitment of David Brailor has so little in the way of financial backing. The amount of money committed by the federal government for improving information technology, specifically for developing electronic medical records, which is what we desperately need, is off by three zeroes.
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From page 24...
... The regional medical practice study that generated the number of 98,000 for people dying from medical error found that patients pay one-fourth of the expense of medical injuries out-of-pocket. So it is a huge amount of money, and if we want to do something about improving our systems, it seems to me we ought to hold accountable the organiza
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Key Terms

  • national quality
  • safe practices
  • electronic medical
  • medical record
  • medical records

  • central line
  • quality forum
  • george isham
  • academic medical
  • medical centers

  • iom report
  • safe practice
  • adverse outcome
  • immense significance
  • line infection

  • bluecross blueshield
  • outcome index
  • team training
  • treating patients
  • lose money

  • improve safety
  • intensive care
  • healthcare research
  • medical error
  • care unit

  • patient safety
  • medical injuries
  • provide health
  • patient medical
  • medical practice


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