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Perfecting patient care

by Kathleen RosecloseAuthor: Kathleen Rose Name: Kathie Rose
Email: krose@nbme.org
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Since my last post referred to people who make healthcare better, a post on "Perfecting Patient Care" seemed appropriate.  I recently made a short field trip across the great state of PA to Pittsburgh, where I learned you cannot hail a cab easily, but you can find the dedicated staff at the Jewish Healthcare Foundation (JHF) and Pittsburgh Regional Health Initiative (PRHI) doing their best to address patient safety and quality improvement, often in one patient care setting at a time.

In her dual role as president of JHS and co-founder of PRHI, our highly energetic colleague Karen Wolk Feinstein and a fine cast of PRHI staff eagerly introduced us to "Perfecting Patient Care (PPC)," which is based on the "lean" concept, using Toyota-based methods. PPC is an interdisciplinary fellowship program targeted at graduate students that runs for eight weeks during the summer. Twenty to 25 students from several local universities learn a different tool or philosophy each week. Paired with a local mentor, they meet weekly at a different healthcare institution and set to work on a problem, identified by the institution.  By employing learned observation methods, students are able to identify issues and design an action/improvement plan.  It's an overall win-win situation, the fellows learn a valuable team-based problem-solving methodology, and the institution is provided with valuable information and insight into their issue without having to sacrifice staff time.

Can't participate in the fellowship program?   There's always PPC University, a 4-day program to train champions and healthcare professionals in practice.  Open PPC runs five times a year in Pittsburgh; participants arrive with a goal in mind, e.g., reducing patient falls, eliminating infections, etc., and leave with the design and implementation tools needed to identify the issues, address the problems and attain their goals.  Customized PPC focuses the 4-day program on the needs of an individual institution or care setting and is delivered on-site.

"PRHI offers healthcare leaders the necessary tools, expertise, education, models and networks to perfect patient care and safety in their organizations. Using the Toyota Production System as a model, PRHI developed a quality improvement method for clinical settings known as Perfecting Patient Caresm."

There's also something brewing called Tomorrow's Healthcare, but if I tell you about it, I'd have to kill you.   Before taking my leave, I was eager to sign up for University, as I'm sure there is something I can work on fixing around here!

To learn more about PPC and other projects and PRHI programs, check out their website or stop in and say hey to Karen, Laura, Linda, Steve, Keith, Barb, Gerry, Colleen, Brian, et al...