Report: Transparency is ‘magical pill’ to improve patient safety
Transparency is the “magic pill” needed to solve healthcare safety issues, according to a report published by the National Patient Safety Foundation’s Lucian Leape Institute.
Defining transparency as “the free, uninhibited flow of information that is open to the scrutiny of others,” the report addresses four specific areas where transparency can improve safety:
- Between clinicians and patients to ensure patients are well informed during all stages of care
- Among clinicians to ensure the practices of high performers are shared with their peers
- Between organizations to allow greater collaboration on safety protocols and events
- With the public through meaningful measures and data that is understandable and useful to healthcare consumers
To achieve these ends, the report advises disclosure of conflicts of interest, shared decision making with patients and the development of core competencies for communicating about medical errors and quality measures to patients, families, other medical professionals and the public, according to a press release.
“Transparency has been largely overlooked as a patient safety tool, in part because it requires a foundation of a safety culture and strong organizational leadership,” said Gary Kaplan, MD, FACMPE, chief executive officer, Virginia Mason Health System, in a statement. “The barriers are not necessarily easy to overcome, but we will never truly achieve safe patient care without improvements in transparency in each of the domains we cite.”
Read the report.