Top Leaders From Across the Middle East Come Together To Discuss Potential Next Steps For Patient Safety

RIYADH, KINGDOM of SAUDI ARABIA – December 21, 2011 – GE Healthcare Performance Solutions, a division of GE Healthcare, recently co-hosted a Patient Safety Summit together with the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia’s National Guard Health Affairs in Riyadh, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA). Top leaders from across the industry including speakers from the Saudi Ministry of Health, National Guard Health Affairs, King Faisal Specialist Hospital and Research Center, GE Healthcare Performance Solutions and other international organizations came together to discuss the current challenges of patient safety. This seminar focused on addressing the current challenges for leadership, front line staff and clinicians in the areas of reporting, culture change, and interventions.

The conference was seen as an important milestone in the Kingdom’s journey towards patient safety and quality care. Bringing together global leaders and perspectives, the conference was a critical stepping stone leading towards the upcoming Patient Safety Forum in April 2012 in Riyadh.

A Critical Need for Standardized Reporting

Improving the way data on adverse events gets reported, analyzed, shared and utilized is an essential step to reducing patient harm. A major component in achieving transparency and consistency across hospital systems is to have all hospitals implement the same medical event-reporting technology and standardize their reporting criteria. Many of the hospitals across the Middle East currently use a variety of manual and electronic methods to track events but there is no one streamlined approach. In addition, event definitions, questions asked, and data analysis methods currently differ widely from system to system. Even if hospitals were to find a way to share data with one another, there would be no common ground for analysis and interpretation.

“Using a set of standards of accreditation will help us in improving the work we do today,” said Dr. Mohamed Khoshim, Deputy Minister of Health, Planning and Development. “We need to establish a new culture of patients’ rights. Although accreditation does not measure everything, it can be used as a roadmap in applying standards to prevent both process - as well as human - errors.”

A Culture of Safety

“To establish a culture of safety, an organization must look to establish a multidisciplinary patient safety center of excellence whose primary role is to tackle the toughest problems and make decisions,” said Professor Charles Vincent, Imperial College, London. “Individuals by themselves cannot single-handedly solve systemic organization-wide problems of medical errors that impact not just the patients but care-givers as well.”

Every day, patients are harmed, or nearly harmed, in healthcare organizations across the globe. These incidents are rarely intentional and usually can be avoided. They often stem back to organizational system failures, leadership shortfalls, and predictable human behavioral factors. Establishing a culture of safety, where all levels of the organization feel empowered to take accountability while encouraging hospital staff to foster an environment for open dialogue and improve care by learning from the experiences of peers is critical.

“Regionally, we cannot move forward in addressing patient safety without addressing education and culture,” said Dr. Saadi Taher, Executive Director of Medical Services, Saudi National Guard Health Affairs, Central Region. “Hierarchical structure prohibits medical students and nurses from speaking their mind and voicing concerns. Some of the proposed solutions like clearly defined roles and responsibilities of team members, checklist and efficiency measures would greatly help us move forward. We need to transform our safety culture in order to improve healthcare quality.”

The Need for Evidence Based Medicine

In any business or operation, the majority of hidden costs and duplicated efforts spring from variation, and healthcare is no exception to this rule. “Reducing unwarranted variation of clinical care is a key objective for organizations looking to bridge the quality gap while reducing overall healthcare costs,” said Peter Kinhan, General Manager, Clinical Transformation, GE Healthcare Performance Solutions. “Studies have indicated that 45% of patients do not receive the recommended care leading to poorer clinical outcomes and unnecessary utilization of healthcare resources.”

Next Steps

“Performance Solutions partners with hospitals and health systems across the globe to improve their operational performance so that they are better equipped to succeed amidst the complex challenges facing healthcare today, including patient safety,” said Fida Ghantous, General Manager, GE Healthcare Performance Solutions, Middle East. “The patient safety successes we have been able to achieve in the U.S. are important learning’s for the Middle East as we look to leverage GE’s proven management expertise to help clients identify and improve efficiencies and quality of patient care. At the core of our approach is helping drive cultural change within organizations through a combination of technology, change management and process redesign.”

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