Our Healthcare Sucks’
Assessment of Safety Progress
(Excerpted from Our Healthcare Sucks)
Patient Safety At Ten: Unmistakable Progress, Troubling Gaps.
Health Affairs.29(1), 1/10
| Safety Category | 2009 Grade | Our Grade | Comments (Quotes from source) | |
| Regulatory/ Accreditation | B+ | D | No clear effect on safety;lax oversight. | |
| Reporting systems | B+ | D+ | Almost ½ states with noreporting of “never events”;no transparency; nonational reporting of errors. | |
| Health information technology | C | F | 98% of hospitals withno integrated info.system; “stunningly slow”adoption merits worsethan a C. | |
| Malpractice system and accountability | C+ | D- | “Enforcement remains lax;even for willful violations ofsafety standards.” | |
| Workforce and training issues | B- | D | “Practicing physicians remainunengaged…Surprising lackof progress” is worse than B-. | |
| Research | B- | C- | “Funding is still far too limited,knowledge gaps in crucial areasremain,…ongoing debate onevidence standards must beresolved.” | |
| Patient engagement and involvement | C+ | C- | “We await evidence on the effectiveness of patient engagement”; patient reports of errors at 3X med. records not included. | |
| Provider organ. leadership engagement | B | C | “Not filtering down to front-lineworkers.“The profusion of activities makes harmonization crucial…providers …rebel against competing initiatives”. | |
| National & international organ. interventions | A- | B- | “No evidence of impact & concerns re: unintended consequences…trivial payment cuts to date. | |
| Payment system interventions | C+ | C | “Hard evidence of improvedoutcomes remains elusive”; Progress on safety indicators has remained flat; see text. | |
| Overall grade | B- | D+ |
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