The Sebastian Ferrero Office of Clinical Quality and Patient Safety at Shands at UF, the UF Academic Health Center, won second place and $15,000 in the Reporting Patient Safety Events Challenge this month.
“We were very excited about how the results turned out,” said Linda Allen, manager of the quality system department and team leader of the challenge. “It reinforces the fact that we are on the cutting edge of performance improvement when it comes to reporting adverse events.”
The Houston team KBCoreSM won, according to a press release.
Shands at UF teamed up with International Development, Inc., which is a software developer specializing risk management.
The contest had 36 teams come up with an online application that would make it easier to report adverse events or medical errors that could possibly hurt a patient.
“For example, if someone falls, we record it and are later able to identify the risk of falling and tell the staff how this can be improved,” said Randy Harmatz, chief quality officer of Shands at UF.
Shands and IDinc created an application that allows a staff member to easily record incidents. The system is designed to receive the information inputted and send alerts to people who need to know.
“The concept was to create a revolution from the system that Shands currently uses and upgrade it to meet the necessary requirements,” said IDinc CEO Didier Salem. “I am very pleased and proud of our accomplishments and with the cooperation received from Shands.”
Allen said this recording of information is already done at the hospital level, but there is currently no standardized way of doing so.
“This is a step into the right direction to improving health care nationally,” she said.
