In last Sunday’s AJC article, “When the treatment makes people sick,” readers were given a thorough look at the challenges associated with patient care. But unfortunately they didn’t get the whole picture when it comes to solutions.
In collaboration with the Georgia Hospital Association’s (GHA) innovative patient safety program, the Georgia Partnership for Health and Accountability (PHA), the entire Georgia hospital community has been laser-focused on making patient care as effective and safe as it can be.
Our accomplishments have been numerous. Since 2000, every Georgia acute care hospital has voluntarily enlisted in PHA and all have made a public commitment to provide PHA clinical outcomes data that will allow us to scientifically analyze the information and educate hospitals about what works best and what doesn’t. By embracing the best practices for the treatment of common conditions like heart attacks, heart failure and pneumonia, Georgia hospitals are dramatically improving clinical outcomes and, most important, are saving lives.
In the Georgia hospital community, the culture of patient safety begins not in surgical and patient rooms, but boardrooms and executive offices. Today, Georgia hospital board members and CEOs are learning about maximizing health care quality and are making patient safety job one.
In the future, as we continue to develop accurate data reporting models, hospital CEOs will not only be evaluated on the hospital’s financial performance and management expertise but also on the hospital’s adherence to universally accepted patient safety measures.
All patient safety experts will agree that achieving optimal health care quality is a collaborative effort. That’s why the Georgia hospital community, through PHA, is involved in a variety of partnerships with physicians, patients, community leaders and organizations such as the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, the Georgia Medical Care Foundation and the Georgia Department of Public Health. With these relationships, we are in position to take our patient safety efforts to the next level and make Georgia hospitals among the safest in the nation.
Our work is already paying major dividends: Since 2009, Georgia hospitals have decreased catheter-associated bloodstream infections by more than 50 percent. This initiative, led by national infection prevention expert Dr. Peter Pronovost, who was featured in the AJC article, is saving lives and reducing health care costs.
Contrary to the article's implications, Georgia hospitals are not opposed to public reporting on health care-associated infections or any other data. In fact, since 2007, PHA has hosted its own public reporting website for consumers at gahospitalqualitycheck.org
But any new state-run reporting system must address these questions: How can Hospital A’s infection rates be compared to Hospital B’s rate when Hospital A performs more complex surgeries and is known to treat patients who are much sicker? When a hospital follows all infection prevention guidelines and an infection still occurs, who is to blame?
While Georgia hospitals look forward to being part of this dialogue, it is imperative that any public reporting system be valid, reliable and aligned with existing federal reporting requirements and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention guidelines.
As the state’s leading hospital association, we look forward to contributing to any efforts that will educate Georgians about their health care providers. In the meantime, know that the Georgia hospital community is investing considerable time and resources to completely eliminate any preventable errors or infections. We will not rest until that goal is accomplished.
Joseph A. Parker is president of the Georgia Hospital Association.
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