IHS Hospital Inpatient Safety Technical Assistance

IHS is responsible for designing and leading a patient safety initiative focusing on 12 areas of focus:

1. Adverse drug events
2. Catheter-associated urinary tract infections
3. Central line-associated blood stream infections
4. Injuries from falls and immobility
5. Obstetrical adverse events
6. Pressure ulcers
7. Surgical site infections
8. Venous thromboembolism
9. Ventilator-associated pneumonia
10. Readmissions to hospitals within 30 days of discharge
11. Patient and family engagement
12. Leadership engagement

IHS has implemented the IHS Hospital Quality Consortium to provide organizational structure for the Partnership for Patients initiative and develop and share quality improvement strategies. The IHS Hospital Consortium includes 28 IHS hospitals in 8 States.

The purpose of this project was to provide support and technical assistance to the 28 IHS hospitals participating in the Partnership for Patients initiative in several areas. This included assessing current data capabilities to establish a baseline for the 12 focus area measures and reporting on changes in these measures over time; providing assistance to improve data capabilities in targeted areas to ensure accurate and comparable measure reporting across all 28 hospitals; and developing, facilitating, and providing training and learning sessions for the hospitals that would assist them to design and implement quality improvement initiatives to achieve positive improvements in the key quality measures and increases in patient, family, and leadership engagement over time.

Sundance Research Institute, under subcontract to Econometrica, provided technical assistance and training on patient safety measures, reporting, and quality improvement strategies through hospital-specific assessments, site visits, and training events targeted to the individual hospital’s identified needs and improvement goals. Learning sessions and trainings were provided through webinars, meetings, and other learning collaborative events.