The Institute of Medicine’s 1999 “To Err is Human” report – often credited with sparking the awareness of what is now the growing field of patient safety – stated that 44,000 to 98,000 Americans die each year because of safety errors, which make up the eighth-leading cause of death in the United States and cost $29 billion per year.
The School of Medicine has dedicated increased emphasis and resources toward patient safety and quality outcomes research. April 11 marked the inaugural Vijay Babu Rayudu Quality and Patient Safety Day at the School of Medicine, giving students, residents, fellows and faculty an opportunity to present their research and learn from experts in the field. Tejal K. Gandhi, M.D., M.H.P., C.P.P.S, president of the National Patient Safety Foundation and the Lucian Leape Institute and associate professor of medicine at the Harvard School of Medicine, was the keynote speaker.
Vijay Babu Rayudu Endowed Chair of Patient Safety Peter Almenoff, M.D., introduced Ghandi and welcomed the Rayudu family members who were in the audience. Gandhi was formerly the executive director of Quality and Safety at Brigham and Women’s Hospital, and chief Quality and Safety officer at Partners Healthcare. In these roles, she led the efforts to standardize and implement patient safety best practices across hospital and health systems. Her lecture, “The Changing Landscape of Patient Safety” focused on five areas of patient safety as it relates to care across the continuum – hospitals, ambulatory care, outpatient care – patient-family engagement in care, the health care workforce, the need for increased transparency – with colleagues, between organizations and with patients and families – and metrics that matter.
“We need to use technology to help us deliver high quality, safe care in the complexity that we’re living in,” said Ghandi, whose research interests focus on reducing errors by using information systems. “We know that some technologies reduce errors significantly. Computerized physician order entry (results in a) 55 percent reduction in serious errors.”
Ghandi said there is an increased emphasis on certification and fellowship opportunities in the cutting-edge area of patient safety.
“Patient safety is more important than ever,” Ghandi said. “If we’re trying to care for patients across the population, reduce costs and all of these things, we need to have the safest care so that we are preventing complications and errors and all of the issues that are going to end up leading to worse care for our patients.”
Inaugural Vijay Babu Rayudu
Quality and Patient Safety Day Presentations
Student Oral Presentations
- Ryan Eckert, Rohit Saha ‑ Year 1 through 6 Baseline Knowledge, Skills, and Attitudes of Patient Safety
- Evan Martin — Advanced Directive Initiative in Continuity Care Clinics
- Peter Vayalil, Sagar Patel — Congestive Heart Failure (CHF) and Polypharmacy
- Christopher Brett, Nicholas Gier — Follow up Contact Improves Patient Safety and Satisfaction in the TMC Medical Clinics
- McKenzie Lutz — Increasing Diabetes Education in the TMC Internal Medicine Clinics by a Self-Administered Quiz
Student and Resident Poster Presentations
- Apurva Bhatt, Peter Lazarz — MAKING THE SWEET CHANGE! An evaluation of the control of diabetes at the Sojourner Free Health Clinic
- Meena Subramanian — Not Your Typical Carpal Tunnel: Levaquin Induced Neuropathy
- Megan Litzau — Inaugural UMKC All Health Profession Schools Interprofessional Education Class: A Student Facilitator’s Perspective: “It is Everyone’s Role to Provide Safe Patient Care”
- Nikolai Khromouchkine — Whole Exome Sequencing and the Potential to Improve Diagnostic Workup for Genetic Disease
- Suzanne Miller — Review of Quality Improvement (QI) Curricula in Internal Medicine (IM) Residency Programs and Development of the UMKC IM QI Curriculum
- Eva Omoscharka, Priya Skaria, Kamani Lankachandra — Importance of follow up in patients with Papaniculaou test findings of endometrial cells. A Truman Medical Center experience.
- Hamid Zia — Improving Appropriateness of Blood Utilization through Prospective Review of Requests for Blood Products: The Role of Pathology Residents as Consultants
- Beth Rosemergey, Suzan M. Lewis — Improving NCAQ Compliance by Instituting Point-of-Care Hemoglobin A1C Evaluation
- Katie Jackson, Katie Barger — Depression Screening in Type 1 Diabetes
Faculty Oral Presentations
- Peter Almenoff — Predicting potentially avoidable hospitalizations
- Mamta Reddy — Building an Organizational Framework for Patient Safety and Systems Reliability
- Brent Beasley — Tackling Sepsis Mortality in the SLHS
- Shauna Roberts — Redesigning Systems and Processes of Care for Targeted Outcome Improvements
