MA hospital cuts errors 35%, gets $100,000

Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Massachusetts has awarded Boston's Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center (BIDMC) $100,000 for its work in reducing errors on its obstetrics unit. Thanks to process and administrative changes, the department saw a substantial 35 percent drop in adverse events among patients between 1999 and 2005, and even more notably, a 50 percent decline among high-risk patients during the same period. BIDMC began changing the department's process of care after a newborn died on the unit due to communication problems and judgment errors. Hoping to reduce the odds that this would ever happen again, the hospital began sampling approaches from military and aviation, as well as "crew resource management" techniques, which promoted close teamwork. In addition, the department also changed the way it monitored patients substantially, making sure that doctors and nurses knew what medical issues all patients faced rather than just tracking their assigned cases.

To learn more about BIDMC's process:
- read this article from The Boston Globe

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