Lifespan helps prepare wrong-site strategy

OAKBROOK TERRACE, Ill. – The Joint Commission Center for Transforming Healthcare, working with a team of eight hospitals and ambulatory surgery centers, announced a series of targeted solutions on June 29 to help prevent the occurrence of wrong site surgery.
The solutions will be rolled out in a standardized approach as a national pilot program later this year, said Dr. Marc R. Chassin, president of the Joint Commission.
Chassin estimated that the national rate of wrong-site surgery may occur as many as 40 times each week.
“All facilities and physicians who perform invasive procedures are at some degree of risk. The magnitude of this risk is often unknown or undefined,” he said. “Providers who ignore this fact, or rely on the absence of such events in the past as a guarantee of future safety, do so at their peril.”
Lifespan had reached out to the Joint Commission to participate in developing a systemic approach, following several well publicized wrong-site surgeries at Rhode Island Hospital, said Dr. Mary Reich Cooper, senior vice president and chief quality officer at Lifespan, who spoke as part of the national teleconference.
Between 2007 and 2009, there were five wrong-site surgeries at Rhode Island Hospital. Since November 2009, however, no wrong-site operations have occurred at the hospital, Cooper said.
Lifespan conducts more than 25,000 surgeries a year and more than 100,000 procedures. Cooper said the solutions involved improving safety guidelines and increasing ownership of quality measures.
“We have put aggressive systems in place that help to further protect patients from medical errors, but we also know that staying ahead of these sorts of errors involves a continued commitment to learn more and share our experiences,” she said.