Corridor hospitals join Obama administration effort to reduce medical errors

WASHINGTON - A number of Eastern Iowa hospitals have signed on to a new Obama administration public-private patient safety effort aimed at preventing unnecessary deaths.

About 10 years ago, the Institute of Medicine found that nearly 100,000 preventable deaths and many more injuries occur in the nation's hospitals and clinics each year.

Since then, hospitals and doctors have made some changes in the way they care for patients - with mixed results.

The Obama administration recently launched a $1 billion effort to organize doctors, nurses, patient advocates and other health care workers so that they work together to reduce hospital errors. A goal of the “Partnership for Patients” program is to prevent 40 percent of medical errors by 2013, saving more than 60,000 lives.

Mercy Medical Center in Cedar Rapids is among the area hospitals that have joined the effort. But it already has won praise for its patient safety record.

“You are doing for your local community what we want to do for the nation,” Sen. Barbara Mikulski, D-Md., told Mercy Medical Center CEO Tim Charles at a Senate hearing earlier this month.

Charles was asked by the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions (HELP) Committee to testify about how his hospital protects patients.

Charles said Mercy adopted a “100,000 lives” campaign in 2003. That campaign was created by Don Berwick, President Barack Obama's choice to head the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services.

One result: Mercy is now in the top 3 percent of hospitals with the lowest rates of patient readmissions, which are often the results of errors in initial care.

Charles said sharing medical staff with Cedar Rapids' St. Luke's Hospital helps develop a safety net.

“When a best practice is developed in one institution, that best practice migrates to the other facility,” he said. “We compete ... but when it comes to quality, we're absolutely fighting the same fight.”

St. Luke's Hospital has also signed onto the “Partnership for Patients” program. But Sherry Justice, the hospital's director of performance improvement, said St. Luke's had initiated its own program in 2007, called “Passion for Prevention” that aims to improve patient safety.

Justice said the program began with efforts to curb hospital-acquired infections, falls, pressure ulcers and improve pain management.

“We now have a culture of safety that encourages people to speak up when something goes wrong,” Justice said.

The University of Iowa Hospitals and Clinics in Iowa City also has joined the Obama administration initiative.

University spokesman Tom Moore said its health system already has a campaign to reduce ventilator-induced pneumonia cases and incidents of a dangerous type of infection among premature infants.

While Iowa hospitals have taken steps to strengthen patient safety, the state has vulnerabilities. It is among 24 states that does not require its hospitals to report their medical mistakes to the state.

“There's never been legislation to do it,” said David Werning, spokesman for the Iowa Department of Inspections and Appeals.

The state's hospitals oppose mandatory reporting requirements. They say many hospital and clinics already voluntarily report their mistakes.

Patient advocates, however, say Iowa's system is not good enough.