10 years later, there’s still a quality chasm, and Senate Dems are wusses

It’s been a full decade since the Institute of Medicine published the second volume in its landmark series on patient safety and quality of care, Crossing the Quality Chasm. We appear to be not much closer to achieving a high-quality health system as we were 10 years ago.

Last week, as you may have already heard, a paper in Health Affairs from researchers at the University of Utah concluded that adverse events may be 10 times more prevalent than previously believed and that errors may occur in an astounding one-third of all hospital admissions. The research team, which included such luminaries as Dr. David Classen, Dr. Brent James and the Institute for Healthcare Improvement‘s Frank Federico, also said that their estimates probably were on the conservative side.

Patient-safety advocate Regina Holliday finagled her way into the Health Affairs briefing on the subject on Thursday, and was disappointed by her observation that patients were almost an “afterthought” in a discussion on how to close the gaping chasm. Holliday, a sometimes painter, expresses her frustration in words in this interesting blog post and on canvas. Note that she depicts Accountable Care Organizations as a unicorn.

Do I have to remind you of who used to be the driving force behind the IHI? That of course would be Dr. Donald M. Berwick, the administrator of CMS that Republicans want to kick to the curb because they think they can score political points against the Obama administration. For that matter, the Obama administration and Democrats in the Senate are willing to sacrifice Berwick because they clearly lack the cojones to stand up for better healthcare. Yes, I said cojones. Sue me.

Please read and share my series of posts on Berwick if you haven’t done so already.

Berwick political saga is a tragic attack on better healthcare (March 14)

More reasons why CMS needs Berwick (March 20)

Slams on Berwick getting pathetic (March 23)