Sprint for Surgical Safety
The Oregon IHI Network (six organization that have helped Oregon hospitals with the Institute for Healthcare Improvement (IHI) interventions include: OAHHS, Acumentra, Patient Safety Commission, CareOregon, the OMA, and the ONA) is collaborating to support the IHI's call for a Sprint to accelerate progress toward testing and full implementation of the World Health Organization Surgical Safety Checklist. The checklist has three parts: Sign In – Brief - Debrief and adds an element of teamwork to the universal protocol currently in use. The WHO study indicates that even hospitals with 94% compliance with using their own checklist had improvements in post surgical complications. Some sites found a 40% decrease in complications. A decrease in post-surgical complications translates to better patient outcomes and cost savings for hospitals.
The initial focus of the Sprint is for one surgeon to test the checklist in one operating room in every Oregon hospital by April 1, 2009. Experiences with the checklist indicate that the time involved for complex surgeries is less than five minutes. The node organizations are working to help Oregon hospitals with piloting and implementation of the checklist. A recommended checklist template is attached for your use. Some of the SCIP (surgical care improvement program) measures have been included as an example of how you can customize the checklist to fit the goals of your organization and increase compliance with the SCIP measures. It is imperative that you do not remove any other checklist items to preserve the integrity of the checklist process. In other words, feel free to add to the checklist, just don't remove any of the items. If you have questions, please contact Diane Waldo at diane.waldo@oahhs.org
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