Hospital
Advisory Councils Get Patients’ View on Safer
Health Care
By Carolyn M.
Clancy, M.D.
July 21, 2009
Most people know
actor Dennis Quaid for his roles in movies such
as The Right Stuff and The Rookie.
But since his infant son and daughter were
mistakenly given a dangerously high dose of a
blood thinner in 2007, Mr. Quaid also has become
a patient safety advocate. (The twins have since
recovered from that incident).
Not all patient
safety advocates are movie stars, of course. But
many have witnessed situations in which their
family member was seriously injured or died due
to a medical error. My agency, the Agency for
Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ), and
other groups want to change our health care
system to prevent these errors.
The Quaids’
experience put a spotlight on how to prevent
drug errors in the hospital. Other groups, such
as
Consumers Advancing Patient Safety,
seek to get patients more involved in working
with health care organizations to stop medical
errors.
Some hospitals
are reducing the risk of medical errors by
forming patient safety advisory councils. These
councils serve as a bridge between hospitals and
patients to increase communication between
patients and health care professionals. They
also allow the patient’s point of view to be
heard and, in some cases, to change existing
practices.
With funding from
AHRQ,
Aurora Health Care,
a large health system in Milwaukee, WI,
developed a patient safety council of patients,
doctors, nurses, pharmacists, and outside
experts to reduce medical errors in the system’s
100 outpatient clinics.
During the first
council meeting in 2005, council members gave
examples that showed big gaps in communication
and understanding among doctors and patients.
Doctors complained that patients were unable to
describe the medicines they were taking, but
some patients showed lists of medications they
brought to all appointments. Other patients said
they didn’t worry about keeping their own lists
because they assumed their doctor or nurse kept
that information.
Based on that
input, Aurora Health Care created and
distributed personal medication lists and bags
to patients. Patients were asked to use the bags
to bring their medicines to appointments so
their doctors would be clear about what
medications they were taking. Patients who saw
their doctor regularly were contacted once a
year before an appointment and were reminded to
bring their medicine list with them.
Aurora Health
Care’s community outreach showed positive
results, according to a
followup study. It showed:
- More
accurate medicine lists for older patients.
The accuracy of these lists among patients
55 and older improved from 55 percent before
the education campaign to 72 percent
afterward.
- High
levels of patient involvement. More
than three-quarters of patients 55 and older
wrote down the medicines they received. And
73 percent brought the lists to their
medical appointments.
- High
levels of involvement by health care
professionals. Surveys found that
85 percent of physicians, nurses, and
pharmacists said that having patients bring
in their medicine list made their records
more accurate.
To help others
create patient safety advisory councils, the
team at Aurora Health Care outlined key steps in
a
guide that AHRQ published last year. The
guide offers a range of practical advice,
including suggestions on how doctors, nurses,
and patients can talk to each other in an open
and constructive way.
Creating a safer
health care system, inside and outside the
hospital, is a large and complex task. For
change to be successful, patients need to be
involved. Patient safety advisory councils can
help us achieve this goal.
I’m Dr. Carolyn
Clancy, and that’s my advice on how to navigate
the health care system.
More Information
Agency
for Healthcare Research and Quality
Guide for Developing a Community-Based
Patient Safety Advisory Council
http://www.ahrq.gov/qual/advisorycouncil/
Agency
for Healthcare Research and Quality
Health Care Innovations Exchange
Community Collaboration Improves Accuracy of
Medication Lists for Elderly Patients in
Outpatient Clinic Setting
http://www.innovations.ahrq.gov/content.aspx?id=1766
Aurora
Health Care
http://www.ahrq.gov/qual/pips/grants.htm#leonhardt
Consumers
Advancing Patient Safety
http://www.patientsafety.org/
Current as of July 2009
Internet Citation:
Hospital Advisory Councils Get Patients’
View on Safer Health Care. Navigating the
Health Care System: Advice Columns from Dr.
Carolyn Clancy, July 21, 2009. Agency for
Healthcare Research and Quality, Rockville, MD.
http://www.ahrq.gov/consumer/cc/cc072109.htm
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