Inspired by what I learned in Telluride, I joined the fledgling House Staff Quality Council. Founded in late 2013 as requirement from ACGME and CLER, the HSQC has become an organization that reports to the medical board and collects information from the patient care hotline. As a core leadership member, I decided to write a mission statement full of quality care gold nuggets. Anyone care to help me revise?
Mission Statement
The HSQC aims to encourage a hospital culture of blameless error reporting and safety risk mitigation through resident-driven quality improvement and patient safety projects, and to allocate a $50,000 annual budget funded by NY Methodist Hospital through a collective bargaining agreement with CIR-SEIU. The council further serves as an interdepartmental collaborative effort among all house staff at NY Methodist Hospital.
The council will review error reports via the patient-safety hotline (x5988), identify threats to patient safety, and make action to improve systems processes rather than to punish individuals. A representative of the council will report to the medical board on a monthly basis, and hold the board accountable for open or unaddressed issues.
The HSQC shall hold monthly meetings to review these issues with core leadership, to be attended by representatives from every department staffed with resident physicians, and shall be open to observers. Guests representative of nursing, respiratory therapy, physical therapy, patient transport, radiography, custodial services, and any other ancillary service shall be invited for offering perspectives, and further identifying systemic problems and solutions.
Representatives of the HSQC shall be responsible for spreading a hospital culture of non-punitive error reporting, near-miss reporting, patient safety threat identification, and care quality improvement by revision of systems processes and policy.