Patient Safety
Effective efforts to reform the health care systems were introduced in the five years after an Institute of Medicine report called for changes, but health care organizations faced some obstacles to implementing changes, a study in the Joint Commission Journal on Quality and Patient Safety found.
For the study, researchers interviewed 16 health care providers and researchers at organizations involved in redesigning the health system.
The study found that four factors were necessary to overcome redesign barriers:
- Directly involving top- and middle-level management;
- Coordinating improvement efforts with organizational priorities;
- Establishing infrastructure, process and performance review systems; and
- Developing "champions" for the project.