Reported by John Monk in the South Carolina State
Atul Gawande, a leader in patient safety initiatives that have already saved numerous lives, joined with the South Carolina. Hospital Association Wednesday to formally kick off a pioneer medical error-reduction program in sixty one South Carolina hospitals.At least 500 of the 5,000 patients who die each year following surgeries in S.C. hospitals should be saved by 2013 with a savings of $28 million if his pre-surgery checklist is only minimally successful, Gawande said.
“This is not a transformation that will take one year — the politicians won’t be happy with the pace of change, but it will be lasting change,” said Gawande, 45, the Boston surgeon largely responsible for developing a “checklist” procedure that’s attracted widespread attention.
Based on Boeing airplane pilot checklists, it helps ensure surgical teams don’t skip a key procedure in the incredibly complex, fast-paced world of today’s modern operations.Airlines long ago found out that aviation had gotten so complex that pilots needed checklists — not so detailed that it caused undue delays, but one that allowed pilots to pay attention to key areas where the risk was great. “The complexity of flying aircraft began to exceed the capacity of the brains of even their top pilots — it just wasn’t possible to remember it all,” Gawande said. “The checklist enabled them to remember a bundle of things, parts of which could easily slip away.”
When fully implemented — and if South Carolina’s results in preventing unnecessary deaths match results in more limited studies — it’s possible that more than 2,000 S.C. patients a year would survive preventable complications, Gawande said.
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