Case Stories and Innovative Projects - Pennsylvania
The Pennsylvania Office Rural Health (PORH) recognized the power of collaboration for its small rural hospitals within the SHIP category of reducing medical errors and quality improvement. Encouraged by its network of Critical Access Hospitals and their participation in a Balanced Scorecard data collection project, the PORH facilitated the development of Pennsylvania's Safe Medication Practice Quality Initiatives Collaborative.
Through a contract with the Institute for Safe Medication Practices (ISMP), the PORH is working with 10 participating hospitals to standardize data collection and safe medication practices to reduce the system-based causes of medication errors. SHIP funds are used to subscribe to the ISMP collaborative; ISMP collects and aggregates data and works with the collaborative to improve safe medication practices in each participating hospital.
This 15-month project consists of three phases: 1) development of the collaborative and assessment of current practice, 2) defining outcome measures/ quality monitoring indicators for the collaborative and recommendations for standardizing and improving error reporting, and 3) ongoing support and education for hospital and collaborative data collection and reporting.
Contact: Larry Baronner