Quality and safety are part of M Health Fairview’s culture. Our team members — from leaders, providers, and nurses, to environmental, supply chain, and information technology staff — are committed to providing the very best care, keeping patients and staff safe, eliminating preventable harm, and improving health outcomes.
The Quality and Safety team leads our work, in partnership with teams from across the system, and consists of the following departments:
- Policy Services
- Infection Prevention
- Regulatory
- Quality Improvement
- Employee Occupational Health & Safety
- Patient Safety
Keeping a pulse on our safety culture
Each year our health system conducts the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) culture of safety survey. AHRQ has developed and validated standardized survey tools and questions for various care settings that measure the extent to which our organizational beliefs and values support and promote patient safety. This survey is being administered annually to continually assess our organization’s strengths and opportunities related to our safety culture. Research has shown that significant relationships exist between safety culture scores and important healthcare delivery metrics and outcomes.
Our goal is to keep patients, families, visitors, and healthcare workers safe by striving for zero preventable harm
M Health Fairview is committed to continuous improvement to strengthen our culture of safety. As a health system, we:
- Train all staff on how to prevent mistakes, stay safe, and talk clearly with others.
- Use a standard method to share important details between patients, families, and staff so nothing gets missed.
- Listen to feedback from patients, families, and team members to make care safer.
- Create an environment where everyone should feel safe to speak up to protect health and care for all.
- Work to prevent violence at work so patients and staff stay safe.
Patient Care and Outcomes
M Health Fairview focuses on excellence in quality and safety — providing outstanding patient care and achieving the best outcome for every patient at every interaction with our health system.
We support our safety culture through programs designed to teach consistent safety behaviors and reinforce error prevention tools. Our leaders are committed to a fair and just culture that holds people accountable while focusing on risk, system design, human behavior, and patient safety.
Safety Always
M Health Fairview is focused on building a highly reliable culture of patient and employee safety. Our system strives to eliminate preventable harm and its impact on patients and team members. Our Safety Always program educates all staff, starting on day one about key high reliability behaviors and error prevention tools.
Safety Event Reporting System
Patient safety is a significance focus of our health system. To help keep our leaders and teams accountable, we track all safety-related events at our hospitals and clinics. These include medical errors, injuries, and events that could have caused harm, known as “near misses.” The data is intended to generate learning and dialogue among frontline caregivers as we strive to eliminate preventable harm.
Leader Rounding
Our health system’s leaders, including our executive leaders and President and CEO, regularly visit with staff at our sites to better understand opportunities and align on where we can improve. The goals of rounding are to connect, listen, support, and follow up. Rounding is a key practice that honors relationships through communication, gratitude, and humble inquiry. The result is improved patient outcomes and collaboration among teams.
Electronic Health Records
M Health Fairview uses Epic to manage its electronic health records. Epic is a set of healthcare software applications that support all functions related to patient care, including registration and scheduling, ancillary systems for pharmacists and radiologists, and billing. Epic gives nurses and providers across our healthcare system — from your family doctor to your heart specialist — accurate, up-to-date information to help improve care coordination and outcomes.
MyChart
MyChart, an extension of Epic, is the patient portal to your care. In MyChart, patients can communicate with your doctor, request prescription renewals, review test results, and oversee your appointments. If you haven’t registered already, set up an account today to help you better manage your care.
Flu Vaccine Program
As a healthcare system, we believe it is our responsibility to protect the wellbeing of our teams, provide a safe and healthy environment for the patients and communities we serve, and set an example for our neighbors. One way we do this is by highly encouraging all onsite employees to be vaccinated against the flu on an annual basis.
Hand hygiene
Hand hygiene — washing your hands with soap and water or an alcohol-based hand rub — is a simple but vital aspect of patient and employee safety. According to the World Health Organization, hand hygiene is the single most important safety measure to avoid transmission of germs and prevent health care acquired infections.
M Health Fairview takes hand hygiene seriously. That’s why we provide annual education, conduct regular hand hygiene observations, and track compliance rates. We encourage our patients and visitors to practice good hand hygiene when visiting our hospitals and clinics to help prevent the spread of disease.
Safe Workplace
All patients, staff, and visitors deserve to be treated with respect, compassion, and dignity. Our goal is to create a safe and healing environment for everyone so our teams can focus on helping and healing those we serve.
With strong board and leadership support, we invest in initiatives and work collaboratively with outside organizations and nurses and other staff to identify and address gaps and implement new ways of working that make our workplace safer. We look at past events and trends to help drive change, and implement best practices to prevent future occurrences.
Our efforts are focused on embedding the best practices identified in the Joint Commission’s latest requirements, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) Violence Prevention guidelines, the Minnesota Hospital Association’s road map, Advisory Board Recommendations, and the site annual gap analysis for the Minnesota Department of Health.
Take part in your care
The most important member of your care team is you. Make the most of your care experience by:
- Learning who is managing your care.
- Asking questions when you don’t understand something.
- Checking with your care team when waiting for things like follow up or test results.
- Using MyChart to help you manage your care and communicate with your care team.