Patient Safety

Help Video

How to Find UBT Basics on the LMP Website

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LMP Website Overview

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How to Find How-To Guides

This short animated video explains how to find and use our powerful how-to guides

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How to Find and Use Team-Tested Practices

Does your team want to improve service? Or clinical quality? If you don't know where to start, check out the team-tested practices on the LMP website. This short video shows you how. 

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How to Use the Search Function on the LMP Website

Having trouble using the search function? Check out this short video to help you search like a pro!

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How to Find the Tools on the LMP Website

Need to find a checklist, template or puzzle? Don't know where to start? Check out this short video to find the tools you need on the LMP website with just a few clicks. 

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TOOLS

PPT: Getting to Zero Pressure Ulcers

Format:
PPT

Size:
1 Slide

Intended audience:
LMP employees, UBT consultants, improvement advisers

Best used:
This PowerPoint slide features a Northern California team that improved patient safety. Use in presentations to show some of the methods used and the measurable results being achieved by unit-based teams across Kaiser Permanente. 

Related tools:

TOOLS

PPT: Storytelling Helps With Early Cancer Detection

Format:
PPT

Size:
1 Slide

Intended audience:
LMP employees, UBT consultants, improvement advisers

Best used:
This PowerPoint slide features a Northwest team that tried a unique approach to get more patients screened for cancer. Use in presentations to show some of the methods used and the measurable results being achieved by unit-based teams across Kaiser Permanente. 

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TOOLS

SuperScrubs: How Ordinary Workers Save Lives

Format:
PDF (color or black and white)

Size:
8 pages (trim size is 7" x 10" but this can be printed easily on 8.5" x 11" paper)

Intended audience:
Frontline managers and workers

Best used:
This lighthearted look at a serious subject can spark discussion within teams on how to keep patients safe.

 

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TOOLS

Team Presentations on Patient Safety

Format:
Powerpoint

Size:
41 pages

Intended audience:
Frontline employees and managers

Best used:
These slides were presented by three teams that shared their outstanding work on patient safety in a virtual UBT Fair in March, 2013. Use to spread best practices on patient safety.

The teams featured are:

  • Cumberland (GA) infectious diseases/oncology team on medication reconciliation
  • Rock Creek (Colorado) gastroenterology team on equipment cleanliness
  • South San Francisco (NCAL) radiology team on a stop-the-line process to prevent wrong-site X-rays

 

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Videos

Preventing Pressure Ulcers

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(2:59)

This approximately three-minute video highlights a Walnut Creek Respiratory Care Services team that has gone two years without a single instance of a serious pressure ulcer resulting from a respiratory aid.

 

 

TOOLS

Poster: Medication Reconciliation Keeps Patients Safe

Format:
PDF

Size:
8.5” x 11”

Intended audience:
Frontline employees, managers and physicians

Best used:
This poster highlights a Georgia team that reduced duplicate medications listed in patient records. Post on bulletin boards, in break rooms and other staff areas.

Related tools:

TOOLS

PPT: Medication Reconciliation Keeps Patients Safe

Format:
PPT

Size:
1 Slide

Intended audience:
LMP employees, UBT consultants, improvement advisers

Best used:
This PowerPoint slide features a Georgia UBT that reduced duplicate medications listed in patient records. Use in presentations to show some of the methods used and the measurable results being achieved by unit-based teams across Kaiser Permanente.

Related tools:

Reducing Duplicate Meds Is Good Patient Care

Deck: 
Team looks to avoid errors and costly hospital stays

An accurate list of a patient’s prescriptions is critical to maintaining continuity of care.

It also helps to decrease medication errors, and one of the Joint Commission’s national patient safety goals requires medication reconciliation at hospitals and clinics.

So, in order to protect patient safety, it's crucial caregivers compare the medications a patient is taking (and should be taking) with newly ordered medications.

The Infectious Disease/Oncology team at Cumberland Medical Office Building in Atlanta had a high percentage of patient records in KP HealthConnect that listed duplicate medications.

To improve medication reconciliation, the team did a manual cleanup of patient charts over a period of several weeks. Then it instituted a new process for checking medication. They had the licensed practical nurses (LPNs) and medical assistants (MAs) call patients and ask them to bring their bottles of medication to their office visit.

During the initial workup, the MAs and LPNs reviewed patient medications, and checked off in the members’ charts which medications the patients were and were not taking.

The providers then confirmed medications once again with the member and removed all possible duplicate oncology meds from the patient’s record.

In collaboration with the clinical pharmacist, the MAs printed out a snapshot of the patient’s medications and gave it to the nurse practitioner for review and removal of any expired medication.

As they found success, the team included more medications in the process.

For instance, the team members reviewed patient records for infusion medications and one-time-only meds a patient might need to take before a procedure. Infectious disease pharmacists also began removing duplicate medications for their overlapping oncology patients.

Team members reviewed statistics for duplicate medications from KP’s National Reporting Portal, analyzed the data at huddles and posted it in the department.

They also monitored whether providers increased the number of times they had to reorder medications (which would indicate they were too aggressive in deleting prescriptions). As it turned out, the reorder rate was unaffected by the project.

The percentage of duplicate medications fell to 15 percent, far exceeding the team’s goal. And by avoiding hospital admissions due to inadequate medication reconciliation, the team saved $90,000 in three months.

It also created better communication with patients.

“Knowledge is power,” says Gwendolyn Brown, the team’s management co-lead. “It helped patients and their families ask more questions.”

And a full team effort helped the project succeed, as they moved from Level 2 to 4 in Path to Performance.

“It is tiring and frustrating when you are the only person doing the work,” says Brown. “Here, everyone is involved.”

For more about this team's work to share with your team and spark performance improvement ideas, download a poster or powerpoint.

 

Polish Your Skills, Save the Planet

Deck: 
Southern California EVS teams go green with new certificate program

Story body part 1: 

Cutting waste and saving money for Kaiser Permanente members and patients is good. But 350 Environmental Service workers in Southern California are taking that mission a step further by tending to Mother Earth as well.

Kaiser Permanente and two Labor Management Partnership-funded workforce development trusts are among the health care partners nationwide that are training frontline workers and managers in improved recycling, waste disposal, energy conservation and other green practices. The U.S. Department of Labor and the Healthcare Career Advancement Program, a national partnership of unions and hospitals, are leading the effort.

“‘Carbon footprint’ is a phrase that’s thrown around a lot,” says Milford “Leroy” Alaman, EVS operations manager at the Los Angeles Medical Center. “Now our staff is able to understand that when you are talking about conserving energy, water and electricity, you are talking about looking at the resources we have in our facility and holding on to just what we need instead of creating more waste for us and the planet.”

Leading change at work

Along the way, these “green teams” also are reducing operating costs, enhancing employee skills and morale, and improving patient and workplace safety. 

For example, the EVS department is now using environmentally friendly microfiber mops to clean a single patient room. This has the benefit of not spreading infections between rooms and preventing lifting and straining injuries caused by wringing traditional mops and hauling buckets of water.

The department also has started a project that is reducing the cost and trouble of replacing the 500 D-cell batteries used in the hospital restrooms’ automatic towel dispensers. The traditional batteries wore out in a matter of weeks—costing about $3,000 a year to replace and adding some 6,000 batteries a year to local waste or reprocessing streams. Starting in February 2012, workers installed new rechargeable batteries. Overall, EVS' green projects, including the use of rechargeable batteries, are saving an estimated $12,000 a year.

Enhancing skills, raising sights

“I feel better having conversations with anyone…doctors, nurses, I can tell them how to be green,” says EVS attendant Jose Velasco, an SEIU UHW member and a recent graduate of a green certification course offered at West Los Angeles Community College.

The program also was piloted at KP Riverside Medical Center, where the EVS unit-based team is reaching out to others with its newfound expertise. Now an EVS member is embedded with the Operating Room UBT—with others to follow—to help tackle waste and hygiene problems there.

The SEIU UHW-West & Joint Employer Education Fund and the Ben Hudnall Memorial Trust have helped underwrite the cost of the training for Kaiser Permanente’s LMP-represented workers. Eventually, frontline workers may be able to use their certifications for higher pay and promotions as medical center “green leads,” a program that would be negotiated between KP and the unions.

But the training already is making a difference to workers as well as to KP and the community. “They have more tools, more knowledge, so they are able to catch things,” says Angel Pacheco, management co-lead of the EVS UBT at Riverside. “We talked about saving the environment for future generations.”

TOOLS

Word Search: Patient Safety

Format:
PDF

Size:
8.5" x 11"

Intended audience:
Frontline workers, managers and physicians

Best used: 
For the times when you want to take a light approach to a serious topic at a team meeting. This word search includes patient safety terms.

Related tools:

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