Saving 100,000 Lives – Mayo organizations join national campaign to improve health care safety

What if health care organizations across the country got together, and agreed on changes in their practices that would improve safety and save 100,000 lives?

That's the intent of the 100,000 Lives Campaign, championed nationally by the Institute for Healthcare Improvement. The campaign aims to enlist thousands of hospitals across the country in a commitment to make changes in their processes that have been proven to prevent avoidable deaths.

Mayo organizations were among the first to sign onto the campaign. Mayo Health System organizations have been leaders in patient safety efforts on the national level for many years.

"We're constantly evaluating our practices to make sure we're providing the best and safest care for our patients," says Peter Carryer, M. D., chair of the Mayo Health System Board. "The 100,000 Lives Campaign lets us share what we've learned in improving the safety of our care, and at the same time learn from other hospitals across the country that are involved in this campaign."

The initial efforts of the 100,000 Lives Campaign are focused on:

• Creating rapid response teams, deployed at the first sign of patient decline
• Adopting acute myocardial infarction care standards to prevent deaths from heart attack
• Preventing adverse drug events
• Preventing central line infections
• Preventing surgical site infections
• Preventing pneumonia caused by ventilator use

Immanuel St. Joseph's in Mankato, Minn., which is part of Mayo Health System, was one of the first organizations in the country to join the 100,000 Lives Campaign. Immanuel St. Joseph's had a number of patient safety efforts already under way when the Institute for Healthcare Improvement program was announced in 2004.

Among Immanuel St. Joseph's earliest successes was a dramatic reduction in the number of ventilator-associated pneumonia cases, which dropped from 14 in 2002 to zero in 2004. The ventilator-associated pneumonia guidelines include five essential elements of care, and staff have consistently delivered all of those elements over the past year and a half. Immanuel St. Joseph's has also seen similar improvement and reduction in inpatient mortality rate in cases of acute myocardial infarction (heart attack).

The 100,000 Lives Campaign provides tools to improve care and measure success. Whether a hospital chooses to apply all, or some, of the recommended interventions, its results will be routinely tracked and measured, and will serve as a regular barometer for the campaign's progress, an idea that is wholeheartedly supported by Immanuel St. Joseph's.

"We need to become a more data-driven organization," says William Rupp, M.D., president and CEO of Immanuel St. Joseph's. "The 100,000 Lives initiative enables us to benchmark with other organizations and ultimately learn from the success of others. That can only lead to better patient outcomes."