Johns Hopkins Medicine will establish a new patient safety institute using a recent $10 million donation, the hospital announced yesterday. The renowned Maryland-based hospital plans to create the Armstrong Institute for Patient Safety and Quality, aimed at not only improving outcomes for Johns Hopkins patients, but all patients.
The Institute will be named after donor C. Michael Armstrong, chair of the board of trustees and former chair of Comcast, AT&T, and IBM.
"I believe that everything we do at Johns Hopkins Medicine-research, education, clinical practice, hospital care-is driven by our priority and focus on patients," Armstrong said in an announcement. "We have been making excellent progress on patient safety and quality, but we can do better. We must take our patient safety research and results to the next level, to be the best."
The new institute will serve as a learning laboratory to test safety initiatives, including reducing preventable patient harm, eliminating healthcare disparities, improving collaboration, and creating accountability.
As patient safety and quality measures continue to be tied to reimbursement, more institutions might look to best practices from established institutions. In 1999, the Institute of Medicine released its landmark report, To Err Is Human, which named system problems and medical errors as a leading cause for patient deaths. In 2009, The Joint Commission, the largest accrediting body, issued a Sentinel Event Alert (Issue 43) detailing the need for leadership's commitment to patient safety.
Johns Hopkins Medicine expects to award the directorship of Institute to Armstrong soon.
To learn more:
- read the Johns Hopkins Medicine press release
- check out The Joint Commission's Sentinel Event Alert
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