Before I comment about the never-ending problem of patient safety in our state and country, I want to provide kudos to the Iowa Department of Transportation (Iowa DOT) and Volvo for doing a great job of keeping vehicle drivers more safe.
Iowa Department of Transportation
When you drive on Iowa highways, particularly on our interstates, you will invariably see snarky, but clever, messages on 79 electronic message signs that may force a chuckle. You can thank the Iowa DOT and the public for these creative messages. The signs are designed to grab the driver’s attention with messages that are part of the ‘Zero Fatalities’ program the DOT launched back in 2014. The DOT promotes this program through blogs and social media. Additionally, the Iowa DOT pulls together safe driving and improved trauma care through a program called TraumaHawk.
Every Monday, the DOT messages change and relate to five driving categories such as buckle up, drive sober, stay alert, pay attention and slow down. But another statistic is commonly updated – sharing the latest number of fatalities on Iowa roads since the beginning of the year. This one always has my attention. Maybe it’s just me, but I am curious to know whether or not we have fewer fatalities.
I’m impressed that not only are the fatalities counted, but they are quickly shared with the public in ‘real time.’ According to the Iowa DOT website, a ‘fatality’ is considered “crash-related” when death occurs within 30 days (720 hours) of a crash. Complex crash investigations can delay the official fatalities report, so the numbers for the current months are preliminary and can change considerably.
Relating road fatalities with preventable medical error fatalities may sound like a stretch – but it’s not. The federal government and all 50 states have made vehicle fatalities and serious injuries a major safety priority. The design and manufacture of the vehicles we purchase are a direct result of these priorities.
Volvo’s Promise
At least one manufacturer, Volvo, has made safety it’s branded message – and market differentiator. This has been a huge success for Volvo when competing against a crowded field of car manufacturers. One of the visions listed by Volvo on its website is truly an eye opener:
There it is. Volvo has declared a zero tolerance for manufacturing unsafe vehicles. Quite an impressive Big Hairy Audacious Goal (special thanks to authors James Collins and Jerry Porras for coining the ‘BHAG’ term).No one should be seriously injured or killed in a new Volvo car by 2020.
What About the Medical Care We Receive?
Why shouldn’t we have the same amount of commitment from the medical establishment, the federal government and all 50 states on tracking and reporting unsafe medical care? Great question, but we don’t.
Twenty years ago, the Institute of Medicine’s To Err is Human report was published, sending shock waves around the country that at least 44,000 and as many as 98,000 people die in hospitals due to preventable adverse events. The authors of this report called for developing a mandatory, nationwide system for reporting adverse events causing death or serious harm. Yet two decades later, we still have no system in place on a national basis. About two dozen states require providers to report adverse events, but these events are a narrow range of “never events,” which cover only a fraction of all harm events and errors. Iowa is not one of these states.
Tracking and reporting unsafe care boils down to disagreements on how to accurately measure patient harm. Arguments evolve around defining medical errors and avoidable harm, determining whether deaths were caused by errors or other factors, and heaven forbid, the inconvenience of having to collect this data.
Additionally, there is disagreement about the effectiveness of having healthcare staff voluntarily report adverse events or use other means, such as having automated harm surveillance tools embedded in the electronic health record (EHR). According to a 2011 Health Affairs article, voluntary reporting missed 90 percent of adverse events. It’s impossible to fix safety problems if only 10 percent of errors are observed and reported. Further, surveillance tools in EHRs can be manipulated to suit preference of results.
Apparently, ‘inconvenience’ seems to outweigh any perceived benefits of providing safer care. Seeking better measurements, however, should not hold up patient safety improvement efforts. Provider resistance to public reporting of errors is a big roadblock to making preventable medical errors a necessary reality. Unlike the Iowa DOT and Volvo initiatives, we have no ‘Zero Tolerance’ goal in eliminating preventable medical adverse events in Iowa or the U.S.
A New Relevant Role for Insurance Companies
Because the medical establishment and policymakers are unlikely to move forward to proactively improve healthcare outcomes and eliminate preventable medical errors, true payers – taxpayers, employers and their employees – must take charge. They must insist that ‘middlemen’ such as insurance companies implement initiatives, as I have outlined in my Des Moines Business Record article (2018), to proactively learn more from Iowa patients about their experiences with Iowa hospital and clinic encounters.
As an example, Wellmark can play a much greater, more relevant role – similar to the Iowa DOT and Volvo – and become the insurance company committed to the safety of their members – and not just function as a transactional player that processes claims with unknown outcomes. The premiums paid by Iowa employers and their employees should already include this ‘safety’ pledge that is not being acted upon. When you think about it, insurance companies are the stewards of our hard-earned money. We depend on them to use this money wisely.
Similar to our highways in Iowa today, imagine walking into your local hospital and seeing an electronic display showing real-time results of the ‘zero-tolerance’ program that reports preventable adverse events for that hospital. Now that would be a BHAG!
The next steps we take in Iowa will define our ethical commitment to this public health crisis.
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