America’s Poorest City (Detroit) Leads The US In Healthcare Quality Reform
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Nancy Schlichting |
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.
