WIHI: A New Framework for Safety in Ambulatory Care

Date: March 10, 2016

Featuring:

• Mark Jarrett, MD, MBA, MS, Chief Quality Offer and Senior Vice President, Northwell Health
• Fran Ganz-Lord, MD, FACP, Director of Ambulatory Quality & Medical Director, Northwell Health Premium IPA Network and Northwell ACO
• Ann Lewis, CEO, CareSouth Carolina
• Tejal Gandhi, MD, MPH, CPPS, President and CEO, National Patient Safety Foundation, Lucian Leape Institute, Certification Board for Professionals in Patient Safety
• Jennifer Lenoci-Edwards, RN, MPH, CPPS, Director, Patient Safety, IHI

What comes to mind when you think about patient safety in the ambulatory setting? Infection rates? Probably not. The issues are of course quite different in outpatient care, and that's one reason it's not always obvious to practitioners and staff which of their many daily activities might inadvertently contribute to patient harm. Activities such as failing to follow up on patient referrals, or to communicate test results. Or getting frustrated with the EHR and creating workarounds.

 

IHI's patient safety leads have been doing a lot of thinking about the need for a new safety framework suited to ambulatory care in order to better highlight the unique fault lines and improvement priorities for this setting. Components of this framework and how they’re being tested and applied, as well as real-world examples from Northwell Health and CareSouth Carolina, are explored on this WIHI.