Sara J. Singer

The culture of safety: results of an organization-wide survey in 15 California hospitals

Objective: To understand fundamental attitudes towards patient safety culture and ways in which attitudes vary by hospital, job class, and clinical status. Design: Using a closed ended survey, respondents were questioned on 16 topics important to a culture of safety in health care or other industries plus demographic information. The survey was conducted by US mail (with an option to respond by Internet) over a 6 month period from April 2001 in three mailings. Setting: 15 hospitals participating in the California Patient Safety Consortium. Subjects: A sample of 6312 employees generally comprising all the hospital’s attending physicians, all the senior executives (defined as department head or above), and a 10% random sample of all other hospital personnel. The response rate was 47.4% overall, 62% excluding physicians. Where appropriate, responses were weighted to allow an accurate comparison between participating hospitals and job types and to correct for non-response. Main outcome measures: Frequency of responses suggesting an absence of safety culture (“problematic responses” to survey questions) and the frequency of “neutral” responses which might also imply a lack of safety culture. Responses to each question overall were recorded according to hospital, job class, and clinician status. Results: The mean overall problematic response was 18% and a further 18% of respondents gave neutral responses. Problematic responses varied widely between participating institutions. Clinicians, especially nurses, gave more problematic responses than non-clinicians, and front line workers gave more than senior managers. Conclusion: Safety culture may not be as strong as is desirable of a high reliability organization. The culture differed significantly, not only between hospitals, but also by clinical status and job class within individual institutions. The results provide the most complete available information on the attitudes and experiences of workers about safety culture in hospitals and ways in which perceptions of safety culture differ among hospitals and between types of personnel. Further research is needed to confirm these results and to determine how senior managers can successfully transmit their commitment to safety to the clinical workplace.

Relationship of Safety Climate and Safety Performance in Hospitals

OBJECTIVE To examine the relationship between measures of hospital safety climate and hospital performance on selected Patient Safety Indicators (PSIs). DATA SOURCES Primary data from a 2004 survey of hospital personnel. Secondary data from the 2005 Medicare Provider Analysis and Review File and 2004 American Hospital Associations Annual Survey of Hospitals. STUDY DESIGN A cross-sectional study of 91 hospitals. DATA COLLECTION Negative binomial regressions used an unweighted, risk-adjusted PSI composite as dependent variable and safety climate scores and controls as independent variables. Some specifications included interpersonal, work unit, and organizational safety climate dimensions. Others included separate measures for senior managers and frontline personnels safety climate perceptions. PRINCIPAL FINDINGS Hospitals with better safety climate overall had lower relative incidence of PSIs, as did hospitals with better scores on safety climate dimensions measuring interpersonal beliefs regarding shame and blame. Frontline personnels perceptions of better safety climate predicted lower risk of experiencing PSIs, but senior manager perceptions did not. CONCLUSIONS The results link hospital safety climate to indicators of potential safety events. Some aspects of safety climate are more closely related to safety events than others. Perceptions about safety climate among some groups, such as frontline staff, are more closely related than perceptions in other groups.

Patient safety climate in 92 US hospitals: differences by work area and discipline.

Background:Concern about patient safety has promoted efforts to improve safety climate. A better understanding of how patient safety climate differs among distinct work areas and disciplines in hospitals would facilitate the design and implementation of interventions. Objectives:To understand workers’ perceptions of safety climate and ways in which climate varies among hospitals and by work area and discipline. Research Design:We administered the Patient Safety Climate in Healthcare Organizations survey in 2004–2005 to personnel in a stratified random sample of 92 US hospitals. Subjects:We sampled 100% of senior managers and physicians and 10% of all other workers. We received 18,361 completed surveys (52% response). Measures:The survey measured safety climate perceptions and worker and job characteristics of hospital personnel. We calculated and compared the percent of responses inconsistent with a climate of safety among hospitals, work areas, and disciplines. Results:Overall, 17% of responses were inconsistent with a safety climate. Patient safety climate differed by hospital and among and within work areas and disciplines. Emergency department personnel perceived worse safety climate and personnel in nonclinical areas perceived better safety climate than workers in other areas. Nurses were more negative than physicians regarding their work units support and recognition of safety efforts, and physicians showed marginally more fear of shame than nurses. For other dimensions of safety climate, physician-nurse differences depended on their work area. Conclusions:Differences among and within hospitals suggest that strategies for improving safety climate and patient safety should be tailored for work areas and disciplines.

Differences in Safety Climate between Hospital Personnel and Naval Aviators

We compared results of safety climate survey questions from health care respondents with those from naval aviation, a high-reliability organization. Separate surveys containing a subset of 23 similar questions were conducted among employees from 15 hospitals and from naval aviators from 226 squadrons. For each question a “problematic response” was defined that suggested an absence of a safety climate. Overall, the problematic response rate was 5.6% for naval aviators versus 17.5% for hospital personnel (p < .0001). The problematic response was 20.9% in highhazard hospital domains such as emergency departments and operating rooms. Problematic response among hospital workers was up to 12 times greater than that among aviators on certain questions. Although further research on safety climate in health care is warranted, hospitals may need to make substantial changes to achieve a safety climate consistent with the status of high-reliability organizations.

Defining and Measuring Integrated Patient Care: Promoting the Next Frontier in Health Care Delivery

Integration of care is emerging as a central challenge of health care delivery, particularly for patients with multiple, complex chronic conditions. The authors argue that the concept of “integrated patient care” would benefit from further clarification regarding (a) the object of integration and (b) its essential components, particularly when constructing measures.To address these issues, the authors propose a definition of integrated patient care that distinguishes it from integrated delivery organizations, acknowledging that integrated organizational structures and processes may fail to produce integrated patient care. The definition emphasizes patients’ central role as active participants in managing their own health by including patient centeredness as a key element of integrated patient care. Measures based on the proposed definition will enable empirical assessment of the potential relationships between the integration of organizations, the integration of patient care, and patient outcomes, providing valuable guidance to health systems reformers.

Improving Patient Safety by Taking Systems Seriously

PATIENT SAFETY HAS BEEN A PRIORITY IN HEALTH CARE since Hippocrates admonished physicians to “first do no harm.” Even so, the Institute of Medicine found in 2000 that approximately 98 000 patients die from preventable medical errors each year. Recent US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates project that 270 individuals die each day from hospital-acquired infections. Despite substantial efforts and investments, widespread and substantial improvement is not evident. The problem is not in knowing what to do. Techniques, tools, and some best practices are available, and many health care organizations are making efforts to apply them. The importance of creating a “culture of safety” has also been noted. This involves continuous vigilance or mindfulness, learning, and accountability. A greater emphasis on safety over productivity and on teamwork over individual autonomy, increased standardization and simplification, and the implementation of an environment in which personnel are encouraged and feel comfortable to report errors and mistakes are needed. Although creating a culture of safety is important, creating a culture of systems is a more fundamental challenge. In this Commentary, the term systems means systems of care that occur both within and across organizations. For example, in studies involving causes of adverse events in cardiac surgery, more than two-thirds were classified as nontechnical or systemsoriented issues including delays and missing equipment, and more of these problems occurred in cases with adverse outcomes than in successful cases. The greatest barrier to patient safety and safety culture is the inherent fragmentation of the US system of care. Safety will improve when the underlying system of care improves.

Effect of a Multipayer Patient-Centered Medical Home on Health Care Utilization and Quality: The Rhode Island Chronic Care Sustainability Initiative Pilot Program

IMPORTANCE The patient-centered medical home is advocated to reduce health care costs and improve the quality of care. OBJECTIVE To evaluate the effects of the pilot program of a multipayer patient-centered medical home on health care utilization and quality. DESIGN An interrupted time series design with propensity score-matched comparison practices, including multipayer claims data from 2 years before (October 1, 2006-September 30, 2008) and 2 years after (October 1, 2008-September 30, 2010) the launch of the pilot program. Uptake of the intervention was measured with audit data from the National Committee for Quality Assurance patient-centered medical home recognition process. SETTING Five independent primary care practices and 3 private insurers in the Rhode Island Chronic Care Sustainability Initiative. PARTICIPANTS Patients in 5 pilot and 34 comparison practices. INTERVENTIONS Financial support, care managers, and technical assistance for quality improvement and practice transformation. MAIN OUTCOMES AND MEASURES Hospital admissions, emergency department visits, and 6 process measures of quality of care (3 for diabetes mellitus and 3 for colon, breast, and cervical cancer screening). RESULTS The mean National Committee for Quality Assurance recognition scores of the pilot practices increased from 42 to 90 points of a possible 100 points. The pilot and comparison practices had statistically indistinguishable baseline patient characteristics and practice patterns, except for higher numbers of attributed member months per year in the pilot practices (31,130 per practice vs 14,779, P = .01) and lower rates of cervical cancer screening in the comparison practices. Although estimates of the emergency department visits and inpatient admissions of patients in the pilot practices trended toward lower utilization, the only significant difference was a lower rate of ambulatory care sensitive emergency department visits in the pilot practices. The Chronic Care Sustainability Initiative pilot program was associated with a reduction in ambulatory care-sensitive emergency department visits of approximately 0.8 per 1000 member months or approximately 11.6% compared with the baseline rate of 6.9 for emergency department visits per 1000 member months (P = .002). No significant improvements were found in any of the quality measures. CONCLUSION AND RELEVANCE After 2 years, a pilot program of a patient-centered medical home was associated with substantial improvements in medical home recognition scores and a significant reduction in ambulatory care sensitive emergency department visits. Although not achieving significance, there were downward trends in emergency department visits and inpatient admissions.

Reducing Hospital Errors: Interventions that Build Safety Culture

Hospital errors are a seemingly intractable problem and continuing threat to public health. Errors resist intervention because too often the interventions deployed fail to address the fundamental source of errors: weak organizational safety culture. This review applies and extends a theoretical model of safety culture that suggests it is a function of interrelated processes of enabling, enacting, and elaborating that can reduce hospital errors over time. In this model, enabling activities help shape perceptions of safety climate, which promotes enactment of safety culture. We then classify a broad array of interventions as enabling, enacting, or elaborating a culture of safety. Our analysis, which is intended to guide future attempts to both study and more effectively create and sustain a safety culture, emphasizes that isolated interventions are unlikely to reduce the underlying causes of hospital errors. Instead, reducing errors requires systemic interventions that address the interrelated processes of safety culture in a balanced manner.

An overview of patient safety climate in the VA.

OBJECTIVE To assess variation in safety climate across VA hospitals nationally. STUDY SETTING Data were collected from employees at 30 VA hospitals over a 6-month period using the Patient Safety Climate in Healthcare Organizations survey. STUDY DESIGN We sampled 100 percent of senior managers and physicians and a random 10 percent of other employees. At 10 randomly selected hospitals, we sampled an additional 100 percent of employees working in units with intrinsically higher hazards (high-hazard units [HHUs]). DATA COLLECTION Data were collected using an anonymous survey design. PRINCIPAL FINDINGS We received 4,547 responses (49 percent response rate). The percent problematic response--lower percent reflecting higher levels of patient safety climate--ranged from 12.0-23.7 percent across hospitals (mean=17.5 percent). Differences in safety climate emerged by management level, clinician status, and workgroup. Supervisors and front-line staff reported lower levels of safety climate than senior managers; clinician responses reflected lower levels of safety climate than those of nonclinicians; and responses of employees in HHUs reflected lower levels of safety climate than those of workers in other areas. CONCLUSIONS This is the first systematic study of patient safety climate in VA hospitals. Findings indicate an overall positive safety climate across the VA, but there is room for improvement.

Free Internet Access, the Digital Divide, and Health Information

Background:The Internet has emerged as a valuable tool for health information. Half of the U.S. population lacked Internet access in 2001, creating concerns about those without access. Starting in 1999, a survey firm randomly invited individuals to join their research panel in return for free Internet access. This provides a unique setting to study the ways that people who had not previously obtained Internet access use the Internet when it becomes available to them. Methods:In 2001–2002, we surveyed 12,878 individuals 21 years of age and older on the research panel regarding use of the Internet for health; 8935 (69%) responded. We analyzed respondents who had no prior Internet access, and then compared this group to those who had prior Internet access. Results:Among those newly provided free Internet access, 24% had used the Internet for health information in the past year, and users reported notable benefits, such as improved knowledge and self-care abilities. Not surprisingly, the no-prior-Internet group reported lower rates of using the Internet (24%) than the group that had obtained Internet access prior to joining the research panel (40%), but the 2 groups reported similar perceptions of the Internet and self-reported effects. Conclusions:Those who obtained Internet access for the first time by joining the panel used the Internet for health and appeared to benefit from it. Access helps explain the digital divide, although most people given free access do not use the Internet for health information.