December 9th, 2008 by Dr. Val Jones in Audio, Expert Interviews
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Dr. Michael Shabot
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I recently interviewed Dr. Michael Shabot, Memorial Hermann Hospital System’s Chief Medical Officer, about how his hospital is taking steps to improve patient safety and healthcare quality. His hospital was awarded the 2008 National Health System Patient Safety Leadership Award at a ceremony at the National Press Club.
You may listen to your 20-minute interview here, or read my summary of it below.
[Audio:http://blog.getbetterhealth.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/12/shabot.mp3]
Dr. Val: Tell me about what Memorial Hermann has been doing in the area of hospital quality and safety.
Dr. Shabot: We operate Memorial Hermann Healthcare System on the premise that all patients, visitors, and staff will have an absolutely safe environment. In fact, six of our hospitals have gone a year without a single case of hospital-acquired blood stream infections, or ventilator-associated pneumonia.
Larry Kellner, the CEO of Continental Airlines, can travel on any one of his airplanes without checking on the credentials of the pilots. But would you advise a family member to go to a hospital without checking its credentials or being under the care of a physician whom you know and trust? I wouldn’t.
Every single one of our hospital employees has gone through our “cultural transformation” training. They are taught new ways of doing their current jobs – based on safety training with a proven track record in the aircraft and nuclear energy industries. We also feature employees who have “good catches.” Last month’s “good catch” employee found a medication that was packaged incorrectly from the vendor. It was in the correct bin of our computerized dispensing system, the outer package was correct, but the bottle inside contained a different dose. And this medicine was going to be given to a tiny baby in our neonatal ICU. That incorrect dose could have caused terrible harm, but thanks to the alert nurse – we caught the error.
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December 7th, 2008 by Dr. Val Jones in Announcements, Medblogger Shout Outs
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Dr. Ramona Bates is a plastic surgeon who quilts. Dr. Rob Lamberts is a primary care physician who loves animals that begin with the letter “l” (such as lobsters and llamas). The two have put their creative minds together to benefit brain cancer – in honor of a fellow blogger whose young son is losing his battle with the disease.
This holiday season, you might consider bidding on Dr. Bates’ “lobster quilt” to support brain cancer research. There is a silent auction in progress here. Owning the quilt would make a good story, and the return on investment could be priceless. You can search for updates on the auction on Twitter: #lobsterquilt
P.S. Note that Dr. Rob has also started a traveling lobster initiative – where Zippy the plastic lobster is photographed by medical bloggers around the world to enhance awareness of brain cancer. I had the honor of hosting this little crustacean last summer, and took him to the White House. To learn more about Zippy’s travels, check out this website: http://funwithzippy.com/
December 7th, 2008 by Dr. Val Jones in Humor, Medblogger Shout Outs
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The blogosphere is not immune to “one-upmanship” – and a good example can be found on Dr. Rob’s blog. He claims to be “jealous” of the interviews I’ve been doing with hospital executives and celebrity spokespeople. So in order to keep up with this Jones, Dr. Rob landed the biggest interview of the season: one with Santa Claus himself.
Dr. Rob has some interesting ideas about healthcare reform for Santa, so whether you’ve been naughty or nice, head on over to Musings of a Distractible Mind for the scoop.
December 7th, 2008 by Dr. Val Jones in Audio, Expert Interviews
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Nancy Schlichting
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“Detroit is the poorest city in America. But we’re not going to be victims of circumstance. We’re going to rise up and lead the country in healthcare quality and become part of the economic solution for our community. The Henry Ford hospital name must mean something when people drive up to it.”
– Nancy Schlichting, President and CEO, The Henry Ford Health System, Detroit, Michigan
I sheepishly admit to being surprised that a hospital system in Detroit was singled out for a national award for hospital quality and safety. Who would think that the poorest city in America could be a beacon of light in these dark times in healthcare? The story of Henry Ford Health System, and its female president and CEO, Nancy Schlichting, is both inspirational and motivational. I had the chance to interview Nancy at a recent award ceremony at the National Press Club where she received the 2008 National Health System Patient Safety Leadership Award.
You may enjoy our conversation via podcast, but please forgive the “tinny” sound quality. I recorded our conversation with a little hand-held digital device instead of my usual recorded phone line.
[Audio:http://blog.getbetterhealth.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/12/nancyschlichting.mp3]
Dr. Val: Congratulations on winning the National Health System Patient Safety Leadership Award. Has improving patient safety at your hospital been a challenge?
Schlichting: On a given day, a patient may encounter up to 50 different hospital employees. Coordinating our efforts so that the patient’s experience is consistently positive and error-free is certainly challenging.
We have 7 pillars of performance at Henry Ford, and the first is “people.” We like to say that we “have to take care of the people who are taking care of people.” We need to make sure that they have the resources they need, that the processes are in place so they can do their jobs well, and that they get their individual needs met. For example, everyone knows my email address and they can contact me at any time if they’re not getting their problems resolved. I respond to every single email. This creates a culture of openness and responsibility. They know that the person at the top cares about them.
Dr. Val: A prominent community member experienced an unfortunate lapse in communication during his hospital stay, which resulted in compromise of his care, and he eventually died in the hospital. You personally met with his wife and promised her that you’d take the necessary steps to ensure that this never happened again. Tell me more about that.
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December 5th, 2008 by Dr. Val Jones in Opinion
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Thanks to KevinMD for pointing out a recent NYT article about “etiquette-based medicine.” The author, a psychiatrist, suggests that physicians should use a check list to ensure courteous behavior and that this sort of thing should be taught in medical school. His suggestions were also published in the New England Journal of Medicine:
• Ask permission to enter the room; wait for an answer.
• Introduce yourself; show your ID badge.
• Shake hands.
• Sit down. Smile if appropriate.
• Explain your role on the health care team.
• Ask how the patient feels about being in the hospital.
If this sort of thing isn’t intuitively obvious to a physician then I’d say the blame should rest with his parents not his medical school. I mean, do we really need to teach doctors to knock on doors and smile on cue? Aren’t those sorts of things taught in pre-school?
It grieves me that some of my peers do not display what some might call “normal behavior” when interacting with patients. But I don’t think that’s related to their medical school curriculae – it’s the sad result of a broken healthcare system that wears thin our common human decency. Doctors are exhausted by clinical volume, henpecked by bureaucracy, delirious from lack of sleep, and stressed out by the daily grind of bad news, disease progression, and death. When well-groomed adults of sound mind require a checklist in order to smile appropriately, you know something’s terribly wrong.
Now, I don’t excuse disrespectful behavior – we docs must rise above our natural urge to be irritable at times, and remember that our patients are vulnerable and need our help. But for heaven’s sake… let’s drop the smug check lists and finger pointing. We’re all in this together, and it ain’t pretty.
