TapRooT® launches a new edition of the Friends & Experts e-Newsletter focused for Healthcare
A recent Johns Hopkins study claims more than 250,000 people in the U.S. die every year from medical errors. Other reports claim the numbers to be as high as 440,000. Medical errors are the third-leading cause of death after heart disease and cancer (Makary & Daniel, 2016). The cost of sentinel events in time, money, and reputation is significant, especially when good margins measure only in the single digits. The Society of Actuaries estimated that medical errors cost the U.S. $19.5 billion in 2008, with non-reimbursable medical costs per error ranging from $810 to $47,099 (Milliman, 2010). Total costs, which include in-hospital mortality and short-term disability costs, reached over $93,000 per error.
This begs the question: How do healthcare organizations reduce the risk and financial burden of mistakes and errors that cause poor clinical and financial outcomes?
I wholeheartedly believe that the healthcare industry can learn from the likes of oil and gas, mining, nuclear, and utilities industries. TapRooT’s® clients typically operate their businesses in dangerous industries. Quite literally, lives depend on TapRooT’s® world-class investigation, root cause analysis, and corrective action implementation processes. Our clients are top-tier companies in these industry sectors, iconic household names such as Chevron, Exxon, DuPont, Delta, Siemens, and Nuclear Fuel Services. These enterprises fully understand just how critical safety and quality are and how they impact their organization’s reputation and bottom line. Our clients clearly see the value of a well-thought-out and pragmatic approach to developing a formal root cause analysis platform within their organization.
My goal is simple, to introduce TapRooT® to healthcare organizations so they can also realize and benefit from the value of such a program and platform. The healthcare newsletter will be one strategy to meet that goal. Our content will focus on bringing information to our readers about programs such as CMS’ Value-Based payment models which attempt to tie reimbursement to financial and performance accountability. It will also bring insightful resources to our readers’ attention like the must-read book for all health care supervisors and executives: Beyond the Checklist: What Else Health Care Can Learn from Aviation Teamwork and Safety (The Culture and Politics of Health Care Work). Here is an excerpt from the book and a link to a video that highlights the value of this book:
“In medicine it seems now to be universally acknowledged that failures of teamwork and communication-not simply failures in technical proficiency-cause the majority of medical errors and injuries in hospitals and other health care facilities. Studies too numerous to cite have documented that it is not the incompetent surgeon or a small group of bad apples in other disciplines that cause harm to patients. It is human factors – the failure of human beings to relate effectively and productively with one another highly technological settings, to recognize human limitations in performance ability owning to “Life factors” such as extreme fatigue and emotional distress, and to actively resist the culture of blame- that are the major cause of patient harm.” p. 8.
TapRooT® has 30 years of research and experience which we will bring to our readers. TapRooT® exists to solve problems like worker comp issues, quality issues, environmental releases, or god forbid, fatalities and injuries through training on investigations techniques, using the evidence to find causal factors for effective root cause analysis and the implementation of corrective actions that can be both validated and verified so those problems are solved for good.
When you find yourself frustrated that your organization’s corrective action are mostly re-training, re-writing policy and procedures, disciplinary actions like write ups and termination and decide you’d like to spend just a little time having a conversation about the problems you are experiencing and possible solutions, my email is marcus@taproot.com. We can set up a time to talk about your problems and see if it makes sense to take the next step with an introduction to TapRooT®.
It is our privilege to provide this monthly newsletter to our healthcare subscribers so please enjoy the first edition on September 11. If you’re not subscribed, contact editor@taproot.com to sign up.
