Tag: Johns Hopkins

Cost, Value & Tools

Nov 29, 2015

By PETER PRONOVOST, MD

Like a pro golfer swears by a certain brand of clubs or a marathon runner has a chosen make of shoes, surgeons can form strong loyalties to the tools of their craft. Preferences for these items — such as artificial hips and knees, surgical screws, stents, pacemakers and other implants — develop over time, perhaps out of habit or acquired during their training.

Of course, surgeons should have what they need to be at the top of their trade. But the downside of too much variation is that it can drive up the costs of procedures for hospitals, insurers and even patients. When a hospital carries seven brands of the same type of product instead of one or two, it’s not as likely to get volume discounts. Moreover, if hospitals within a health system negotiate independently of one another, they may pay drastically different prices for the exact same item.

Carrying many brands of a given item may also increase risks for error and patient harm. Staff members need to be trained and competent in a variety of tools; the greater the number of tools, the greater the risk for error.

These physician preference items are no small contributor to health care costs. Around the year 2020, medical supplies are expected to eclipse labor as the biggest expense for hospitals, according to the Association for Healthcare Resource and Materials Management. Higher costs for physician preference items are major drivers of this increase.Continue reading…

Potential Bias in U.S. News Patient Safety Scores

Nov 13, 2015

By PETER PRONOVOST, MD

Hospitals can get overwhelmed by the array of ratings, rankings and scorecards that gauge the quality of care that they provide. Yet when those reports come out, we still scrutinize them, seeking to understand how to improve. This work is only worthwhile, of course, when these rankings are based on valid measures.

Certainly, few rankings receive as much attention as U.S. News & World Report’s annual Best Hospitals list. This year, as we pored over the data, we made a startling discovery: As a whole, Maryland hospitals performed significantly worse on a patient safety metric that counts toward 10 percent of a hospital’s overall score. Just three percent of the state’s hospitals received the highest U.S. News score in patient safety — 5 out of 5 — compared to 12 percent of the remaining U.S. hospitals. Similarly, nearly 68 percent of Maryland hospitals, including The Johns Hopkins Hospital, received the worst possible mark — 1 out of 5 — while nationally just 21 percent did. This had been a trend for a few years.

For Patient Safety: A Reversal. What Can Healthcare Teach the Aviation Industry?

Aug 23, 2015

By RHONDA WYSKIEL

There are more than 50 in-flight medical emergencies a day on commercial airlines — or one for every 604 flights, according to a study published in 2013.

What are the odds that two emergencies would occur on the exact same flight, above the Atlantic Ocean and hours from the nearest airport?

My colleague Mark, a critical care physician with whom I’d worked as an ICU nurse, and I were traveling to the Middle East for a patient safety conference. We were comfortably tucked into our seats, as he snored next to me.

It must have been about 3 a.m. when I was awakened by an overhead announcement asking for a medical doctor. I nudged Mark, asking him to press his call light.

As the flight attendant approached, I told her that Mark was a doctor.

“And she’s an ICU nurse, and we work together,” he said, gesturing toward me.Continue reading…

Blood Clots Show Limits of Quality Care Penalties

Aug 6, 2015• 7

By ELLIOTT R. HAUT, MD

In the world of medicine, blood clots during hospitalization have become synonymous with imperfect care. As many as 600,000 patients per year experience a blood clot, and more than 100,000 die as a result, accounting for between 5 and 10 percent of hospital deaths. Regulatory agencies have taken clots as signals that safety and quality have been compromised, and have instituted significant financial penalties on physicians and hospitals for these “preventable events.”

In reality, clots aren’t always as preventable in real-world practice as they are in theory. Blood clots happen even under conditions of perfect, best-practice patient care, which should be seen as testimony to the limits of penalty schemes aiming to improve the quality of care. These penalties should be re-examined.

In a study recently published in JAMA Surgery of 128 blood clot or venous thromboembolism (VTE) cases, my team found that nearly 50 percent of the cases reviewed at The Johns Hopkins Hospital were not actually preventable. In fact, these patients received perfect care by all objective measures — all appropriate preventive measures were taken, including the prescription of the ideal medication and assuring that every dose of medicine was administered. Yet the blood clots still occurred, and the hospital was still financially penalized.

Why Health Care Performance Measures Need Their Own Grades

Jul 13, 2015• 1

By MATT AUSTIN

Some measures of health care quality and patient safety should be taken with a grain of salt. A few need a spoonful.

In April, a team of Johns Hopkins researchers published an article examining how well a state of Maryland pay-for-performance program measure for dangerous blood clots identified cases that were potentially preventable. In reviewing the clinical records of 157 hospital patients deemed by the state program to have developed these clots — known as deep vein thrombosis and pulmonary embolism — they found that more than 40 percent had been misclassified. The vast majority of these patients had clots that were not truly preventable, such as those associated with central catheters, for which the efficacy of prophylaxis remains unproven.

These misclassified cases of blood clots resulted in potentially $200,000 in lost reimbursement from the state, which penalizes hospitals when the additional treatment costs related to more than 60 preventable harms exceeds established benchmarks.

Why the discrepancies? The state identified cases of these clots using billing data, which utilize the diagnosis codes that medical billing specialists enter on claims. These data, also known as administrative data, lack the detail that would be available in the actual clinical record, considered by many to be the most trusted source for safety and quality measures.

A Powerful Idea From the Nuclear Industry

Sep 4, 2013• 2

By Peter Pronovost, MD

Where health care has fallen short in significantly improving quality, our peers in other high-risk industries have thrived. Perhaps we can adapt and learn from their lessons.

For example, health care can learn much from the nuclear power industry, which has markedly improved its safety track record over the last two decades since peer-review programs were implemented. Created in the wake of two nuclear crises, these programs may provide a powerful model for health care organizations.

Following the famous Three Mile Island accident, a partial nuclear meltdown near Harrisburg, Pennsylvania in spring 1979, the Institute of Nuclear Power Operators (INPO) was formed by the CEOs of the nuclear companies. That organization established a peer-to-peer assessment program to share best practices, safety hazards, problems and actions that improved safety and operational performance. In the U.S., no nuclear accidents have occurred since then.

A more devastating nuclear incident in Chernobyl, Ukraine in 1986 spurred the creation of the World Association of Nuclear Operators (WANO), which serves a similar purpose but on an international scale. Since WANO’s inception, no severe nuclear accidents had occurred until the nuclear accident in Fukushima, Japan, caused by a devastating earthquake and tsunami in March 2011.

These programs have succeeded because their purpose and approach is very different from review processes by regulatory agencies. Instead of a punitive process that monitors compliance with minimum standards, peer-to-peer evaluations are thorough, confidential and—importantly—voluntary. They are viewed as mutually beneficial and help advance industry best practices, which are shared widely. The goal is to learn and improve rather than judge and shame. The reviews are done by experts, using validated tools and are ruthlessly transparent yet confidential.

Peer-to-peer review has not been widely used in health care. A couple notable exceptions are the Northern New England Cardiovascular Study, which used organizational peer-to-peer review to improve the care of cardiac surgery patients, and the National Health Service in the UK, which used it to improve the care of patients with lung disease. While provider-level reviews are more common in health care organizations, they fail to capture the scale needed to achieve system-wide improvements.

At the Armstrong Institute, we have been pilot testing peer-to-peer review and early results are encouraging. We have evaluated specific outcomes, like blood stream infections; specific areas, like the operating room; and whole quality and safety programs.

“Unaccountable” An Important, Courageous and Deeply Flawed Book

Nov 5, 2012• 16

By ROBERT WACHTER, MD

In his new book, Unaccountable: What Hospitals Won’t Tell You and How Transparency Can Revolutionize Health Care, Johns Hopkins surgeon Marty Makary promises a “powerful, no-nonsense, nonpartisan prescription for reforming our broken health care system.” And he partly delivers, with an insider’s and relatively unvarnished view of many of the flaws in modern hospitals. Underlying these problems, he believes, is an utter lack of transparency, the sunshine that could disinfect the stink.

The thesis is important, the honesty is admirable, and the timing seems right. Yet I found the book disappointing, sometimes maddeningly so. My hopes were high, and my letdown was large. If your political leanings are like mine, think Obama and the first debate.

Makary hits the ground running, with the memorable tales of two surgeons he encountered during his training: the charming but utterly incompetent Dr. Westchester (known as HODAD, for “Hands of Death and Destruction”) and the misanthropic “Raptor,” a technical virtuoso who was a horse’s ass. Of course, all the clinicians at their hospital knew which of these doctors they would see if they needed surgery, but none of the patients did. (Of HODAD, Makary writes, “His patients absolutely worshipped him… They had no way of connecting their extended hospitalizations, excessive surgery time, or preventable complications with the bungling, amateurish, borderline malpractice moves we on the staff all witnessed.”)

This is compelling stuff, and through stories like these Makary introduces several themes that echo throughout the book:

1) There are lots of bad apples out there.

2) Patients have no way of knowing who these bad apples are.

3) Clinicians do know, but are too intimidated to speak up.

4) If patients simply had more data, particularly the results of patient safety culture surveys, things would get much better.

Why Do Academic Medical Centers Do Poorly on Quality Report Cards?

Sep 23, 2012• 7

By KENT BOTTLES, MD

In September 2012, the Joint Commission recognized 620 hospitals (about 18% of the total number of accredited American hospitals) as “top performers,” but many were surprised when some of the biggest names in academic medical centers failed to make the cut. Johns Hopkins, Massachusetts General Hospital, and the Cleveland Clinic (perennial winners in the US News & World Report best hospital competition) did not qualify when the Joint Commission based their ranking not on reputation but on specific actions that “add up to millions of opportunities ‘to provide the right care to the patients at American hospitals.’”

The gap between the perceived reputation of America’s “best” hospitals and medical schools and their performance on an evidence-based medicine report card provides an interesting lens through which to understand the role and performance of America’s academic medical centers in the 21^stcentury.

The most pressing challenge for American medicine has been summarized in the triple aim: how to cut the per-capita cost of healthcare, how to increase the quality and experience of the care for the patient, and how to improve the health and wellness of specific populations.

Can we expect academic medical centers to lead the country in meeting the challenge? If history is any guide, the answer may be no. In a 2001 article titled “Improving the Quality of Health Care: Who Will Lead?” the authors write:

“We see few signs that academic medical leaders are prepared to expend much effect on health care issues outside the realms of biomedical research and medical education. They exerted little leadership in what may arguably be characterized as the most important health policy debates of the past thirty years: tobacco control, health care cost containment, and universal access.”

Having been a professor at several medical schools (UCSF, University of Iowa, Allegheny University of the Health Sciences, and Michigan State), I learned early on that the key to academic advancement was NIH funded basic science research. While lip service was paid to the ideal triple threat professor (great clinician, superb teacher, and peer reviewed published investigator), the results of the tenure process clearly resulted in a culture where funded research counted far more than teaching and clinical care delivery.

Health Care’s Man on the Moon Moment?

Sep 12, 2012• 7

By Peter Pronovost, MD

On a snowy night in February 2001, Josie King, an adorable 18-month-old girl who looked hauntingly like my daughter, was taken off of life support and died in her mother’s arms at Johns Hopkins. Josie died from a cascade of errors that started with a central line-associated bloodstream infection, a type of infection that kills nearly as many people as breast cancer or prostate cancer.

Shortly after her death, her mother, Sorrel, asked if Josie would be less likely to die now. She wanted to know whether care was safer. We would not give her an answer; she deserves one. At the time, our rates of infections, like most of the country’s, were sky high. I was one of the doctors putting in these catheters and harming patients. No clinician wants to harm patients, but we were.

So we set out to change this. We developed a program that included a checklist of best practices, an intervention called CUSP [the Comprehensive Unit-based Safety Program] to help change culture and engage frontline clinicians, and performance measures so we could be accountable for results. It worked. We virtually eliminated these infections.

Then in 2003 through 2005, with funding from AHRQ, we partnered with the Michigan Health & Hospital Association. Within six months in over 100 ICUs, these infections were reduced by 66 percent. Over 65 percent of ICUs went one year without an infection; 25 percent went two years. The results were sustained, and the program saved lives and money, all from a $500,000 investment by AHRQ for two years.

A Safety Checklist for Patients

Mar 15, 2012• 2

By Peter Pronovost, MD

Far too many patients are harmed rather than helped from their interactions with the health care system. While reducing this harm has proven to be devilishly difficult, we have found that checklists help. Checklists help to reduce ambiguity about what to do, to prioritize what is most important, and to clarify the behaviors that are most helpful.

The use of checklists helped to reduce central-line associated bloodstream infections at The Johns Hopkins Hospital, in hospitals throughout Michigan, and now across the United States. Clinicians have begun to develop, implement and evaluate checklists for a variety of other diagnoses and procedures.

Patients can also use checklists to defend themselves against the major causes of preventable harm. Here are a few you can use:

Health care-associated infections

Ask about your hospital’s rates of central-line associated bloodstream infections in the intensive care unit. The best hospitals use the definitions provided by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and have rates less than one infection per 1,000 catheter days. A rate above three should cause concern.
Whenever clinicians enter your room, ask if they have washed their hands. Request that visitors also wash their hands often. Washing can be with alcohol gel or soap and water.
If you have any type of catheter, ask every day if that catheter can be removed.