Improving patient safety seeks to prevent adverse events leading to patient harm arising as a result of medical care.

In the past decade, thousands of lives have been saved because of innovative efforts to reduce healthcare-associated infections and prevent surgical complications. Missouri hospitals work aggressively to reduce patient harm.

Missouri Harm Dashboards

MHA’s Board of Trustees approved a strategy to reduce statewide infection rates by 10% from 2016 rates by developing hospital-specific dashboards for three harm metrics — Catheter-Associated Urinary Tract Infection (CAUTI), Central Line-Associated Blood Stream Infection (CLABSI) and Clostridioides difficile, formerly known as Clostridium difficile Infection (C. diff or CDI).

Informing CEOs how their facility compares to other Missouri hospitals is the first step of MHA’s larger strategy to aggressively reduce harm across Missouri. The dashboards provide hospital-level rank and clearly establish a harm reduction goal for each of the three quality measures. The dashboards are provided to CEOs and quality directors to promote efficient, timely communication between executives and quality department leads regarding improvement successes and opportunities. MHA will continue to provide strategic guidance and resources to hospitals to support achievement of 10% harm reduction and will update aggregate data quarterly to track statewide progress.

Summary of State Progress	CAUTI	CLABSI	C. diff
Hospitals with a SIR <1, improvement from hospital baseline and performing better than the state target	35	36	37
Hospitals with a SIR <1 and either improvement from hospital baseline or performing better than the state target	25	24	33
Hospitals with a SIR <1, no improvement from hospital baseline and not performing better than the state target	14	13	5
Hospitals with a SIR >1	17	16	18

Data is for Quarter 1 2019.

Hospitals not currently reporting to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s National Healthcare Safety Network’s data portal are encouraged to begin reporting on CAUTI, CLABSI and C.diff, as applicable.

MHA Resources

2019 Aim for Excellence Annual Quality Report

MHA’s Annual Quality Report summarizes the progress and trends of specific quality measures related to infections, readmissions and improving safety. MHA staff support a culture of shared responsibility that holds organizations accountable for the systems they design, while promoting an open and honest reporting environment

view the report

“To Err Is Human” 20th Anniversary

Missouri’s health care providers have made significant progress in their efforts to reduce patient harm since the “To Err Is Human” report was issued in 1999. MHA developed a timeline to explain how Missouri hospitals have invested in quality and patient safety improvement throughout the past 20 years. Shared learning, better systems and increased transparency are helping advance safe, high-quality care in all hospitals.

VIEW THE TIMELINE

Resources

The Guide to Improving Patient Safety in Primary Care Settings by Engaging Patients and Families

This guide from the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality is a resource to help primary care practices partner with patients and their families to improve patient safety. It includes materials and resources to implement patient and family engagement to improve patient safety.

VIEW THE GUIDE

Leading a Culture of Safety: A Blueprint for Success

To help health care leaders achieve their mission of total system safety, the American College of Healthcare Executives and the National Patient Safety Foundation’s Lucian Leape Institute partnered to develop this guide, which is intended to assist leaders in creating, shaping and sustaining the type of culture needed to advance patient and workforce safety efforts. It is designed to inspire, motivate and inform your organization on its journey to zero harm.

VIEW THE GUIDE

Media Library

VIEW THE LATEST PATIENT SAFETY RESOURCES

Patient Safety

Improving patient safety seeks to prevent adverse events leading to patient harm arising as a result of medical care.

Missouri Harm Dashboards

Alison Williams