Charged with reducing patient harm in Minnesota hospitals by 20 percent in the next three years, state hospital leaders are turning to patients — to seek their advice, but also to motivate them to take better care of themselves.
The Minnesota Hospital Association intends to use much of a new two-year, $9.5 million federal grant to improve patient "engagement," an industry term for getting patients to take accountability for their health during and after hospitalizations. While 69 percent of hospitals have engagement committees that give patients and families a forum for ideas and concerns, the association wants that figure at 100 percent by the end of the grant.
Informed patients can make a difference by ensuring their caregivers are taking appropriate precautions, such as moving bed-bound patients every two hours so they don't suffer debilitating pressure sores.
Hospitals also are ranked and financially penalized by their 30-day readmission rates, and patients can help with that by adhering to discharge instructions so they don't suffer complications that force them to go back, said Dr. Rahul Koranne, chief medical officer for the hospital association.
"How do we generate trust," he asked, "so they follow some of the clinical [recommendations] that are right for them?"
The hospital association was one of 16 federally designated quality improvement organizations to receive grant money for this purpose.
Koranne said the state association and its hospitals have a track record of making changes that reduced readmissions, prevented in-hospital urinary tract infections and reduced deaths through earlier diagnosis of sepsis infections. After the U.S. Institute of Medicine estimated in 1999 that as many as 98,000 Americans die every year from hospital errors, Koranne said MHA was the first association to hire someone to focus on the problem. Now, Koranne hopes the state will be a model for patient engagement as well.
Part of the challenge is the increasing diversity of hospital patients, and the need to provide information in multiple languages and in ways that are sensitive to different communities and cultures. Such an approach is needed, Koranne said, to confront the disparities that leave minorities in Minnesota more likely to suffer chronic diseases and die prematurely from them.
"Does that standard or instruction given at discharge even make sense to a patient or family member?" he asked. "Therein lies the work of translating this very complicated information."
Jeremy Olson • 612-673-4499
