Running a hospital: The message you hope never to send
As with many stimulating blog postings, the comments are as interesting as the post itself. Kudos to Paul Levy for doing his best to handle this differently than is the norm in health care – that’s an important role for a CEO who wants to change health care for the better.
I’m particularly drawn to the comment(s) by Ray Poses, MD about doing a “5 Why’s” type exercise to see what is happening upstream (why are teams being pulled in so many different directions regularly) that causes protocols to be slipped.
I also think there’s an opportunity for BIDMC to bring in patients and families to own the solution together. What would care be like if there was a family member in the operating room during surgical prep (Medical College of Georgia does this)? Or if the family had access to the patient’s electronic medical record in real time while in the hospital? Preventing this for another patient may be less about “what” to do in the operating room, but “how” teams (that include patients and families) are involved in the design of the system.
Given the work BIDMC has been doing to be transparent and involve more, rather than less, people in designing and improving their care system, it seems that they’ll do their best for their patients this time, too.