Rekha Murthy, M.D.
Hospital epidemiologist
Cedars-Sinai Medical Center
Los Angeles, California
The problem is not so much in achieving a short-term benefit with campaigns and such that might help improve hand hygiene, but really to sustain it.
Anne-Claire France, Ph.D., CPHQ
Master Black Belt
Memorial Hermann Healthcare System
Houston, Texas
Given how much waste and error currently exist in health care, improving current processes and designing new processes using Lean Six Sigma is a definite move towards achieving and sustaining reliability in high quality cost effective care.
Donny C. Lambeth, M.B.A.
President and COO
North Carolina Baptist Hospital
Wake Forest University Baptist Medical Center
Winston-Salem, North Carolina
Hand hygiene compliance is not a simple problem to fix. It requires systematic process improvements to identify and overcome barriers, both environmental and behabioral. It also requires real commitment from institutional leadership that this is a problem that must be fixed
Russ Olmsted, M.P.H., C.I.C.
Epidemiologist
Saint Joseph Mercy Health System
Ann Arbor, Michigan
What intrigued me about the hand hygiene initiative was the application of newer performance improvement techniques, such as Lean and Six Sigma, that have been embedded more readily in general industry or business and are moving into the health care delivery process. I think it will offer us new ways to look at a longstanding issue-poor adherence of hand hygiene by direct care providers.
David Munch, M.D.
Chief Clinical and Quality Officer
Exempla Lutheran Medical Center
Denver, Colorado
We're learning more than just improving hand-washing. We're learning how to be more reliable in everything we do.
Brian Regan, Ph.D.
Director, Clinical Affairs
New York Presbyterian Healthcare System
New York, N.Y.
Transforming health care means taking what we have done, looking at it in a new way, taking it in a new direction, and rather than making incremental improvement, making revolutionary improvement.
Terrence O’Malley, M.D.
Medical Director
Partners HealthCare System, Inc.
Boston, Mass.
Hand-off communication is an issue that everyone has recognized as a problem, but no one has found the solution. Being part of the Hand-Off Communications work group is an opportunity for us to work with some of the best organizations in health care to help move patient safety and quality ahead; and that is an opportunity that Partner HealthCare could not pass up.
Ann Weinacker, M.D.
Associate Professor of Medicine
Division of Pulmonary and Critical Care Medicine
Stanford University Medical Center
Stanford, Calif.
Ultimately, what we would like to see the Hand-Off Communications project accomplish is improved patient safety, improved patient satisfaction, and improved satisfaction of the people giving and accepting hand offs.
Kenneth Abrams, M.D.
Senior Vice President, Clinical Operations
Chief Quality Officer, Associate Chief Medical Officer
North Shore Long Island Jewish Health System
Great Neck, New York
Every root cause analysis that we go through for a sentinel event identifies communication as the leading issue contributing to patient harm. We must solve the challenges of what constitutes an effective handoff and accept the responsibility for ensuring safe care across the continuum.
Diane Skorupski, R.N., M.S., CNOR, NE-BC
Administrative Director of PeriOperative Services
Rhode Island Hospital
Providence, Rhode Island
We are determined to be among the safest hospitals in the country and continual improvement is crucial to that journey. The Center for Transforming Healthcare and its robust process improvement helped us to methodically examine our Universal Protocol process in surgery.
Sommer Alexander, M.S.
Senior Quality Consultant
University of Minnesota Medical Center Fairview
Minneapolis, Minn.
Transferring the responsibility and authority for a patient's care to another provider or care unit may not sound complicated. But getting exactly the right information to the right people at the right time is a critical component of care delivery. An incomplete hand-off can have dire consequences.
Rick Olson, M.D.
Chief of Staff
Kaiser Sunnyside Medical Center
Clackamas, Ore.
Our patients expect their caregivers to be a highly functioning team; the Hand-Off Communications project will help ensure that is the case.