Adverse Events Report to Be Issued This Week
Template Employee News Article — January 2013
Adverse events report to be issued this week
The Minnesota Department of Health (MDH) will release its ninth annual Adverse Health Events Report on Jan.31. [Your hospital name] will have XX events listed in the report. We are sorry that these events occurred. We’ve taken steps to prevent this from happening again by investigating what went wrong, putting systems in place to fix the problem and sharing the lessons we learned with other hospitals.
[General event category information and actions to prevent future events from occurring can be explained here. Be cognizant not to share information about specific individuals because of peer review protection.]
The adverse health events system is doing exactly what it is designed to do—identify safety issues, spread learnings from events that do occur, and encourage hospitals to work together to implement practices to prevent that type of event from reoccurring. For example:
- Analysis of reported events uncovered a pattern of pressure ulcers related to device use. Now hospitals across the state have expanded their prevention efforts to uncover new ways to prevent these pressure ulcers from forming. [At your hospital name, we are…]
- In May 2012, MDH and the Minnesota Hospital Association issued a safety alert addressing an increase in wrong lens implants related to cataract surgery. Included in the safety alert were recommendations for implant handling and verification.[At your hospital name, we have…]
- Another area where we are pushing further is patient falls. We know that falls are the event most likely to result in patient harm. As the patients we treat become more complex and we see an increase in patient acuity, we have been forced to re-evaluate our approaches to care. One way we are addressing this is to change the way we evaluate patients for risk of injury from a fall by identifying a patient’s individual risk factors and customize a plan to lessen those risks. This approach makes us better able to meet individual patient needs.
These are just a few of the ways we are showing our commitment to improving patient safety thanks to the dedication and hard work of our doctors, nurses and all our employees. Patient safety is our highest priority and our commitment remains to provide the best care possible.
The statewide report is likely to generate media coverage. Should you get questions from your colleagues, family or friends please let them know about our unwavering commitment to patient safety and how we work closely with hospitals around the state to find new ways to make care safer.