Josephine Goode Evans
Corporate Vice President--Risk Services
SSM Health Care
St. Louis, Mo.
SSM Health Care's approach helped promote patient safety by encouraging communication and allowing for the identification of risks and safety hazards.
As corporate vice president of risk management of SSM Health Care, one of the largest Catholic integrated health care delivery systems in the country, Josephine Goode Evans has been working to improve patient safety and open communication by implementing the Just Culture program.
This program, which was developed by David Marx, has now become mandatory in Pennsylvania, North Carolina, Oregon and Missouri.
SSM Health Care, which includes 20 acute care hospitals and two nursing homes in four states including Illinois, Missouri, Wisconsin and Oklahoma, was the first health care system in Missouri to implement the Just Culture program, said Bonnie Boone, a broker at Alliant Healthcare Solutions who works with Evans and nominated her as a Risk Innovator.
"I look at a lot of accounts and clients and you'd be surprised those who talk about quality and don't have patient safety programs," Boone said.
The Just Culture program helps to promote patient safety by encouraging communication and allowing for the identification of risks and safety hazards. Healthcare is largely dependent on self-identification and reporting of errors and unsafe situations in patient care. Self-reporting depends on the willing participation of the workforce to report.
To get the Just Culture program up and running, Evans developed a three-year plan to educate managers, physicians, and staff at SSM Health Care. Evans's goal is to educate 2000 employees by the end of the year.
This process will assist physicians in peer review. Total implementation time is three years to reach a stage where accountability, quality and mentoring are the norm for a healthcare system.
But implementing the Just Culture program alone wasn't enough. Evans wanted to find a way to have some checks and balances as well. She worked with Marx and developed a customized process of checks and balances after the program was implemented.
In addition to the Just Culture initiative, Evans also has been working to protect her employer from cyber liability.
SSM is also the first healthcare provider with a captive insurance program that includes cyber liability coverage to the full extent possible, Boone said.
Based in St. Louis, Mo, SSM Health Care, has about 24,000 employees and is sponsored by Franciscan Sisters of Mary. In 2002, it became the first healthcare recipient of the Malcolm Baldridge National Quality Award, the nation's highest award for quality.
--By Patricia Vowinkel
Editor's note: In the original article, insurance broker Bonnie Boone was misquoted. We have removed her comment and regret and apologize for the error.
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September 15, 2008 Copyright 2008© LRP Publications |
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