Colo. a leader in hospital safety

Rachel Brand, Rocky Mountain News

Published June 27, 2006 at midnight

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A Harvard physician who oversees a national campaign to end lethal errors in hospitals said Colorado's participation rate in the program leads the U.S.

"The energy level in Colorado is not exceeded by any other state in the nation," said Dr. Don Berwick, president of the Institute for Healthcare Improvement.

Berwick's nonprofit says it helped save 122,300 lives since it started a safety campaign in 3,100 hospitals 18 months ago.

Berwick came to Denver on Monday to celebrate the achievement and announce the "six by seven" campaign to encourage participating hospitals to adopt six quality improvement measures by 2007.

"It is pretty aggressive, but I think in Colorado we are well on our way," said Donna Kasuda, HealthOne's vice president for patient safety and quality.

Berwick was on the board of the Institute of Medicine when its widely noted 1999 report found that 44,000 to 98,000 Americans die each year as a result of errors and low-quality care.

In December 2004 he challenged hospitals, saying they could save 100,000 lives if they adopted six simple, low-cost safety measures. The Colorado Trust gave $35,000 grants to the state's hospitals as an incentive, and 61 of 70 hospitals accepted.

Money wasn't the issue, though.

"These are all low-cost or no-cost steps," Berwick said. "But there is the cost of attention."

Three of the changes involve infection control - preventing wound infections, catheter infections and deadly lung infections. Hand washing and greater hygiene are central precautions.

But the highest-impact measure of the six changes is to employ rapid response teams to immediately care for a patient whose condition is worsening.

Frequently, it's a nurse or family member who notices that a patient is delirious or struggling to breathe. The idea was to have a team of medical specialists on call around the clock to respond to these concerns.

HealthOne's Kasuda is "most proud" of putting rapid response teams in its hospitals and credits them with significantly reducing cardiac arrest outside the emergency room.

"It's the best idea," Kasuda said. "I don't know why I didn't think of it 20 years ago."

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