IRVINE, CA--(Marketwired - Jan 16, 2014) - At the second annual Patient Safety, Science & Technology Summit more than 100 hospitals and med tech companies made public commitments and pledges to help reduce preventable patient deaths to zero by 2020 in U.S. hospitals.

The commitments and pledges build on previous public pronouncements other healthcare companies and organizations made during the inaugural Summit last year. "Those commitments and pledges directly resulted in saving the lives of an estimated 602 patients," according to Joe Kiani, founder of the Patient Safety Movement and Masimo Foundation for Ethics, Innovation & Competition in Healthcare. The second annual Summit was co-convened with the Joint Commission Center for Transforming Healthcare.

More than 60 hospitals and healthcare systems made commitments to help reduce preventable patient deaths. Featured commitments from healthcare organizations included:

Neonatal and Pediatric

  • The American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists - Maternal safety initiative
  • CHOC Children's Hospital (Orange, Calif.) - Preventing patient deterioration
  • Newborn Foundation | Coalition - Improved patient safety through routine pulse oximetry screening of neonates

Global

  • EUPSF - Multi-disciplinary approach to support safety and quality of care for patients in Europe
  • Medical University of Vienna - Algorithm-triggered multi-disciplinary perioperative management to optimize patient outcomes

Failure to Rescue

  • Mercy Hospital of Buffalo (N.Y.) - Embracing continuous, post-surgical patient monitoring
  • Baylor Scott & White Health Care System (Dallas, Texas) - Journey to no preventable deaths, no preventable injuries, and no preventable risk

Sub-Optimal Red Blood Cell Transfusions

  • Del Sol Medical Center (El Paso, Texas) - Transfusion reduction initiative
  • Society for the Advancement of Blood Management - Reducing donor blood transfusion

Medication Errors

  • Emily Jerry Foundation - "Guardian Angel" label program to help reduce pediatric and neonate medication errors
  • Massachusetts General Hospital - Fully integrated clinical systems to minimize medication errors
  • Brigham and Women's Hospital - Improve quality/safety of the preparation and testing of compounded sterile products in the pharmacy department

At this year's Summit, attendees formulated three new Actionable Patient Safety Solutions (APSS):

  • Healthcare-associated Infections (HAI) - including urinary tract infections (UTI), clostridium difficile infection (C. diff), surgical site infections (SSI), ventilator associated pneumonia (VAP), and catheter related bloodstream infections (CRBSI).
  • Hand-off Communications - defined as a transfer and acceptance of responsibility for care that is achieved through effective communication. Poor communication during hand-offs has caused, and continues to cause, preventable patient injury and death and increased costs of care.
  • Safety Culture - implementing three central attributes: trust, report, and improve. Lack of a safety culture can result in concealment of errors and therefore a failure to learn from them.

You can view these and the six other APSS at http://patientsafetymovement.org/2013-patient-safety-summit/challenges-and-solutions/

Mr. Kiani also announced the winners of the inaugural Patient Safety Humanitarian Awards, created to recognize those who have done the most in helping get to zero preventable deaths by 2020. The Humanitarian Awards are open to doctors, nurses, therapists, pharmacists, patient advocates, journalists, politicians, government employees, engineers... anyone who is having the biggest impact to improve patient safety. The 2014 winners are:

  • Robin Betts, assistant vice president for quality and patient safety at Intermountain Healthcare, a 22-hospital system in Utah and Idaho. Last year Ms. Betts committed to reducing catheter line associated blood stream infections (CLABSI). Since then, Intermountain has protected at least 43 lives as a direct result of its commitment, and has positively impacted an estimated 140,000 patients.
  • Jon Carlson, director of respiratory care services at Mercy Hospital of Buffalo, who made a commitment to implement patient safety monitoring. His efforts helped save an estimated 10 lives over the past year.
  • Dr. Michael A.E. Ramsay, chairman of the Department of Anesthesiology at Baylor University Medical Center and president of the Baylor Research Institute (BRI) made a commitment to educate clinicians about the unintended risks and delayed effects of some opioids administered post-operatively for pain management. His work included a plan to research, deploy and refine new technologies that help to identify opioid-induced respiratory depression before a failure to rescue occurs. This commitment helped save an estimated 144 lives over the last year.
  • Sen. Tom Harkin (D-Iowa) for ensuring all Americans have access to quality, affordable health care and improving patient safety through his leadership on the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions (HELP) Committee. Sen. Harkin, as Chairman of the HELP committee, held the first of its kind hearing regarding patient safety and hospital-acquired conditions. With this hearing, Sen. Harkin has started a constructive dialogue on what Congress can do to protect our patients.

In addition, 20 medical technology companies pledged to make their devices interoperable so the patient data collected and displayed on their products are accessible for patients and clinicians. To date, 29 medical technology companies have made this public pledge.

"We are delighted that the efforts of these leading hospitals and medical technology companies have so far made a difference in the lives of so many people," Mr. Kiani said. "Together they have saved 1 and 601 lives so far. Our goal is to eliminate 200,000-plus preventable deaths by 2020. We have a long way to go to achieve our goal, but with more amazing people, hospitals and medical technology companies joining in this movement, we are confident we can achieve it. We are especially grateful for the support and expertise of the Joint Commission Center for Transforming Healthcare, which was key to helping make this year's Summit such a success."

"The Patient Safety, Science & Technology Summit demonstrates the kind of progress that can be made when healthcare systems, patients and families, industry, government and nonprofit entities cooperate for the greater good - in this case saving more lives," said Dr. Mark R. Chassin, President and CEO of The Joint Commission and Joint Commission Center for Transforming Healthcare.

For more information please visit http://patientsafetymovement.org.

About The Patient Safety Movement Foundation
 More than 200,000 people die every year in U.S. hospitals in ways that could have been prevented. The Patient Safety Movement Foundation was established through the support of the Masimo Foundation for Ethics, Innovation, and Competition in Healthcare, to reduce that number of preventable deaths to 0 by 2020 (0x2020). Improving patient safety will require a collaborative effort from all stakeholders, including patients, healthcare providers, medical technology companies, government, employers, and private payors. The Patient Safety Movement Foundation works with all stakeholders to address the problems and solutions of patient safety. The Foundation also convenes Patient Safety, Science and Technology summits. The first annual Summit was held in January 2013 and brought together some of our nation's best minds for thought-provoking discussions and new ideas to challenge the status quo. By presenting specific, high-impact recipes to meet patient safety challenges, encouraging medical technology companies to share the data for whom their products are purchased, and asking hospitals to make commitments to implement Actionable Patient Safety Solutions, the Foundation is working toward zero preventable deaths by 2020. Visit www.thepatientsafetymovement.org.

About the Joint Commission Center for Transforming Healthcare
 Launched in 2009, the Joint Commission Center for Transforming Healthcare aims to transform American health care into a high-reliability industry that ensures patients receive care that is consistently excellent and consistently safe. The Center's participants - the nation's leading hospitals and health systems - use a proven, systematic approach to analyze specific breakdowns in care, discover their underlying causes and then develop targeted solutions for health care's most critical safety and quality problems. The Center is a not-for-profit affiliate of The Joint Commission, which shares the Center's proven effective solutions with its more than 20,000 accredited and certified health care organizations. Learn more about the Center at www.centerfortransforminghealthcare.org.