Hospital Begins Publishing Detailed Patient Safety Information

According to the Boston Globe, Brigham and Women's Hospital has begun an ambitious effort to openly recount patient safety mistakes, and the improvements they led to, in a monthly online newsletter for its 16,000 employees. Brigham leaders started the publication to encourage staff to talk openly about their mistakes and propose solutions, and help make sure errors are not repeated.

While many hospitals post information on their websites about patient infections and falls, they rarely provide details of medical errors or candidly discuss with their entire staff how medical mistakes harmed patients. Executives fear the public will find out, sparking lawsuits and scaring off patients. This reluctance, patient safety advocates warn, may be hampering the push to reduce medical errors because there is not wide discussion of how mistakes happen and can be prevented.

The Brigham doesn’t make the newsletters readily available to the public — but it doesn’t hide them either; it gave the Globe all issues. The Brigham began publishing “Safety Matters” online in January 2011 on its employee intranet and will start distributing paper copies in staff lounges, conference rooms, and other gathering spots later this spring — a move that some hospital administrators initially opposed because they worried about scaring patients. Most issues tell a story of medical care gone awry through interviews with caregivers and often with patients, and describe the hospital’s response. Patients are not named, to protect their privacy. Caregivers also are anonymous because hospital leaders do not want to discourage them from reporting problems.