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Press Release
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Contact:
Nancy Fiedler, MHA, 410-379-6200, ext. 3333, nfiedler@mhaonline.org
Kristine
S. George, Delmarva Foundation, 410-763-6295, georgek@dfmc.org
Maryland Patient Safety Center Earns National Recognition
September
20, 2005 –Sharing credit with the state and the health
care community, the Maryland Patient Safety Center today celebrated
being honored with the 2005 John M. Eisenberg Patient Safety and
Quality Award for national/regional innovation in patient safety.
“Receiving the prestigious John M. Eisenberg Patient Safety
and Quality Award is a tremendous honor, but it is even more rewarding
to know we are making real progress improving patient safety here in
Maryland,” said Maryland Patient Safety Center Executive Director Bill
Minogue, M.D.
The Maryland Patient Safety Center, created by the Maryland Health
Care Commission in 2004, is a collaboration between the Maryland Hospital
Association and the Delmarva Foundation.
“The Center has made patient safety everybody’s job and
there is strong evidence that working together, we are making Maryland
patient care safer,” said MHA Senior Vice President Vahé Kazandjian.
More than 2,000 individuals, representing every hospital in the state
as well as other health care providers, have received training from
the Center on the causes of unsafe practices and ways to design safer
systems.
The Center’s first collaborative effort to improve safety in
the intensive care units (ICUs) of Maryland hospitals is already showing
evidence of success. Working with national experts and over 35 teams
from Maryland hospital ICUs, these teams have reduced ventilator-associated
pneumonia by 19 percent in just eight months. Teams working on
reducing blood stream infections have seen a 36 percent reduction over
this time period.
“The Center’s mission and collaborative approach have
galvanized the support and participation of the entire health care
community,” said Maulik Joshi, President and CEO of the Delmarva
Foundation. “The success of our first collaborative has
generated real excitement and commitment to do more to ensure that
Maryland hospitals are the safest in the nation.”
“What makes the Maryland Patient Safety Center unique from just
about every other patient safety program in the country is that the
state gave it a mandate to innovate and go beyond data collection to
actually putting practical, measurable safety improvements in place," said
Del. Brian McHale, a sponsor of legislation to create the Maryland
Center and a member of the Center’s Advisory Board.
The Center has designed a voluntary reporting system for health care
providers to report “close calls” and errors that do not
result in permanent harm to the patient. This information will
supplement the mandatory reporting of serious adverse events already
being collected by the state that will help health providers improve
their systems and reduce mistakes.
The activities of the Center are offered at no charge to Maryland
health care providers and are funded by the Maryland Hospital Association,
the Delmarva Foundation, and Maryland hospitals, with additional financial
assistance from the Maryland Health Services Cost Review Commission
and various private sources.
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About the Maryland Patient Safety Center
The Maryland Patient Safety Center brings health care providers together
to learn the causes of unsafe practices and put practical improvements
in place to prevent harm to patients. The Maryland Hospital Association
(MHA) and the Delmarva Foundation, jointly operate the Maryland Patient
Safety Center. The MHA represents all of Maryland's hospitals
and has been recognized for its involvement in quality of care and
patient safety through the MEDSAFE initiative, Quality Indicator Project,
and educational activities through the Maryland Healthcare Education
Institute (MHEI). Delmarva Foundation, a national not-for-profit
quality improvement organization, has been working with hospitals,
physicians, home health agencies and nursing homes in Maryland for
more than 30 years. For more information, visit www.marylandpatientsafety.org.
About the John M. Eisenberg Patient Safety Award
The John M. Eisenberg Patient Safety and Quality Awards were established in 2002
by the National Quality Forum (NQF) and the Joint Commission on Accreditation
of Healthcare Organizations (JCAHO) in memory of John M. Eisenberg M.D., M.B.A.,
Director of the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) at the time
of his death in March 2002. Dr. Eisenberg was a member of the founding
Board of Directors of the NQF and an impassioned advocate for health care quality
improvement. In his roles both as AHRQ administrator and chair of the
federal government’s Quality Inter-Agency Coordination Task Force, Dr.
Eisenberg was a passionate advocate for patient safety and health care quality
and personally led AHRQ’s grant program to support patient safety research. The
award perpetuates the enduring contributions of this health care and community
leader by recognizing the achievements of individuals and organizations that
have made an important contribution to patient safety and health care quality
in the areas of research or system innovation.
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