Connecticut Hospital Research and Education Foundation sponsored Patient Safety Organization

The mission of the CHREF Patient Safety Organization (PSO) is to promote patient safety by:

• Improving members’ knowledge of quality improvement methodologies, identifying evidence-based and best-demonstrated practices that address Connecticut’s particular needs, and disseminating these practices;
• Bringing together healthcare organizations and other partners that share a commitment to making system-wide improvements in quality and patient safety by undertaking quality improvement collaboratives;
• Improving the performance of Connecticut hospitals and healthcare systems in processes and outcomes of care as reflected in national and local clinical quality and patient safety indicators; and
• Providing leadership and resources for ongoing improvement and enhanced patient safety in the delivery of healthcare services by actively disseminating successes experienced by the hospitals and health systems participating in the quality and safety activities of the PSO.

Operated through the Connecticut Hospital Research and Education Foundation, the education and quality affiliate of the Connecticut Hospital Association, and sponsored by CHA, the PSO achieved formal designation by the Connecticut Department of Public Health as a patient safety organization in October 2004, under Connecticut’s then newly enacted patient safety legislation. All 29 of Connecticut’s not-for-profit acute care hospitals participate in the PSO.

PSO Collaboratives

The CHA sponsored Patient Safety Organization is initiating a series of collaboratives to improve the care given to patients in Connecticut’s hospitals. The first collaborative, to reduce the incidence of pressure ulcers in acute care hospitals by 80% over the next six months, will be initiated in November 2007. Others will follow as clinical issues are identified that have an evidence base that provides best practices for the participating hospitals to use.

The pressure ulcer collaborative and those that follow will be modeled on that used by the Institute for Health Care Improvement (IHI) and will involve an educational session to learn more about the current state of the evidence base for pressure ulcer care, and instruction on using the Plan, Do, Study, Act (PDSA) methodology for rapid cycle improvement. Each hospital team will be asked to set the hospital’s improvement goal and to create an aim statement with measurements specific to the quality improvement work that the hospital will be doing on pressure ulcers. As a collaborative, each hospital’s experience in making and measuring small changes will be shared with their peers so that common experiences can move the collaborative forward more quickly.