Patient Safety First Reports Helping Save 800 Lives

Patient Safety First reports that it has helped save eight hundred lives by preventing sepsis-related deaths. Patient Safety First is a three-year collaboration between the National Health Foundation, California's Regional Hospital Associations, and Anthem Blue Cross to improve the consistency and quality of health care for Californians.


"Patient Safety First is one of the most challenging and potentially rewarding endeavors ever undertaken in the health care system," said Dr. Eugene Grigsby, president of the National Health Foundation, which verified the initial outcomes of the initiative.  "It strives to engage California hospitals in learning collaborations with the specific goal of improving patient safety and cost savings for those needing hospitalization."

The initiative, which brings together more than 160 participating hospitals from across the state, has led to a:

• 41 % reduction in ventilator associated pneumonia (VAP);
• 25 % reduction in central line blood stream infections (CLBSI);
• 24 % reduction in catheter associated urinary tract infections (CAUTI); and
• a reduction in birth traumas and elective deliveries prior to 39 weeks gestation.

Early data suggest the Patient Safety First initiative in California has already resulted in a cost-avoidance of over $11 million. This is money that would have been used to care for patients who would have developed sepsis and other hospital acquired infections if they had not been able to avoid illness as a result of the shared learning made possible by the collaboration.

"First year results show that this type of collaboration works," Grigsby said. "Lives are being saved, incidents of hospital-acquired infections are being reduced and savings are being achieved. Knowledge gained from the first year of the program will be applied in the second and third year of the initiative to help reach the goal of 'zero' hospital acquired infections by the end of year three. Reaching this goal will greatly impact Californians and participating hospitals."

The nation's largest state based patient-safety collaborative, Patient Safety First leverages regional peer-to-peer learning networks to accelerate the adoption of established best practices and quality improvement programs such as Sepsis Early Goal Directed Therapy (EGDT); and the new March of Dimes Toolkit established to eliminate non-medically indicated deliveries before 39 weeks gestational age.