Looking to the future: Patient safety trends

Tejal Gandhi, chief safety and transformation officer, discusses 2021 patient safety trends and why hospitals should prioritize and generate awareness of safety efforts as they pursue their goal of zero harm.

Video Summary

This video features Dr. Tejal Gandhi, Chief Safety and Transformation Officer at Press Ganey, discussing the importance of patient safety in achieving optimal patient experiences. She introduces Safety 2025 and the Equity Partnership, initiatives aimed at advancing the healthcare industry towards zero harm. The video highlights the need for improved safety culture tracking and robust event analysis, especially as data show a worsening safety culture during the pandemic. Dr. Gandhi invites viewers to join their mission to enhance patient and workforce safety.

Video Transcript

Looking to the future: Patient safety trends

"Tejal Gandhi, MD, Chief Safety and Transformation Officer"

So, patient safety is absolutely critical because in order to achieve that goal of the optimal patient experience, which is the optimal quality and safety and patient-centered care for our patients, we absolutely have to prevent harm and get to that goal of zero harm as the foundation for achieving that care.

That's why we created Safety 2025 and the Equity Partnership. Industry initiatives where the nation's leading health systems are coming together to advance our industry to zero harm. So how will we get there? Through better tracking of safety events, robust analysis of causes of events, implementation of actions to prevent these events, and concentration on where safety and equity intersect.

At Press Ganey, what we're seeing is that safety culture has worsened throughout the pandemic. Even compared to 2020, the latest data from 2021 shows worsening in all of the domains of safety culture. The Press Ganey Patient Safety Organization has captured 2.5 million safety events to date, including 600,000 events in 2021 alone.

Of those 600,000 events, 60% were made up from these three areas. 31% were from care management, 15% from medication errors, and 14% from delays in diagnosis or treatment. And what this means is that organizations really need to focus on how to improve patient safety culture as we go forward, because patient safety culture is a leading indicator for eventual patient safety outcomes. And we've already started to see those worsening outcomes.

So this has to be a critical area of focus for organizations as we are hopefully coming out of a pandemic. Join us on our mission to make care safer for patients and our workforce. Visit PressGaney.com/Safety 2025 to learn more.