Safer Hospital Care: Strategies for Continuous Innovation

From newborns switched in the nursery to medication mix-ups and hospital-acquired infections, we are all familiar with the horror stories about hospital safety, and unfortunately, the statistics say we aren’t exaggerating. The safety issue in U.S. hospitals has become so profound and embedded, that we cannot hope to fix it without a paradigm shift in our approach. After defining and demonstrating the true depth of this dangerous concern, Safer Hospital Care: Strategies for Continuous Innovation elaborates on the steps required to make that paradigm shift a reality.

A respected and sought out expert on hospital safety, author Dev Raheja draws on his 25 years of experience as a risk management and quality assurance consultant to provide hospital stakeholders with a systematic way to learn the science of safe care. Supported by case studies as well as input from such paradigm pioneers as Johns Hopkins and Seattle Children’s, he explains how to:

• Adapt evidence-based safety theories and tools taken from the aerospace, nuclear, and chemical industries
• Identify the combination of root causes that result in an adverse event
• Apply analytical tools that can effectively measure hospital efficiency
• Establish evidence between Lean strategies and patient satisfaction
• Make use of various types of innovation including accidental, incremental, strategic, and radical, and establish a culture conducive to innovation

This practical guide shows how to find solutions that are simple and comprehensive, and can produce a high ROI. To reform hospitals, we must recognize that they are highly dynamic systems that must be fixed systemically. Instead of thinking in terms of continuous improvement, we need to think in terms of continuous innovation. Safe hospital care is not just about doing things right; it is also about breaking old habits, finding new tools and doing the right things.

Not only is this an excellent work and a valuable addition to the field, it is also very timely in light of revelations about woefully inadequate or absent procedures in the present crisis. We have always needed a 'systems' approach, and this book should be required reading for all decision makers.
―Richard Fellows, MD