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On any given day, Military Health System (MHS) patient safety professionals are working tirelessly to ensure they provide the highest quality of care to their patients. Driven by a high level of dedication, MHS patient safety professionals know that our patients are the single most important part of our mission and we must serve our patients in an open and transparent way.
Today, across the MHS, there are a number of actions already in motion to help our organization advance towards high reliability and ensure that we partner with our patients every step of the way. A great example of the commitment to our patients is the MHS transparency initiative. Guiding this initiative is the Transparency Initiatives Group (TIG) – a team of representatives from the Services and the Defense Health Agency (DHA) – charged with executing a four-phase action plan. To date, the following has been accomplished:
More is yet to come from the TIG and the MHS transparency initiative, including continued engagement with the beneficiary community for feedback, additional measures and improvement in the visual display of data.
“…We want to be among the best. If we visualize where we are, and we share that with our beneficiaries, it not only helps our patients engage with their health care, but helps us [the MHS] get better as well,” says Army Col. Sharon McKiernan, chief of Integrated System Support of Healthcare Operations within the Defense Health Agency. At the MHS, together we strive to provide excellent, highly reliable care and we will continue to work to reach our patient-centered goals.
Another effort that demonstrates how committed the MHS is to transparency and high reliability is the Patient Safety Culture Survey (CS). The CS offers the MHS the opportunity to identify areas of improvement in the system, as well as opportunities to continue to excel when it comes to patient care. To support leadership and staff in leveraging the CS results, a CS Resource Guide will be available on the DoD PSP website in the coming weeks to help leadership and patient safety staff to turn their MTF data into actionable insights.
Serving our patients and their families is our absolute privilege. As MHS patient safety professionals, we will maintain a collective focus on quality, safety and excellence for everything that we do. Through efforts like the MHS transparency initiative, we will continue to make progress towards high reliability and achieving zero harm to patients under our care.
Disclaimer: Re-published content was edited for the purposes of this article. Read original post.