Closed-Loop Processes to Facilitate Transparency and Enhance Patient Safety

Donna Willeumier, Administrator Safety and Regulatory Compliance, and Kate Kovich, Director Patient Safety and Regulatory Compliance, Advocate HealthCare, Oakbrook, IL, describe how Advocate uses technology to facilitate patient safety lessons learned sharing. Root cause, apparent cause and common cause analyses are performed and reported in standardized reports. The lessons learned from the cause analyses are shared online so that proactive risk reduction can be implemented at the sites. The use of reports to drive improvement of patient safety processes are discussed.