Working on my fellowship for the American Hospital Association and National Patient Safety Foundation Patient Safety Leadership program I have been given opportunities to read some of the very interesting information about patient safety I would have otherwise passed over. I am reminded about the history and the studies that have been done over the years. Patient safety is a topic so near and dear to my heart. I am one of the very few people lucky enough to turn a “hobby” into a career. Of course the pay sucks but the work is very fulfilling.

Reading articles written about making a business case for patient safety is a reminder how bad the problems really are in healthcare. If information has been studied, measured and implemented in one facility, why aren’t other medical institutions following this same process? If it works in one facility, why aren’t they all doing it?

Maybe because they haven’t read the same articles I am reading. They have to find this information out for themselves instead of some organization saying “here’s the way it should be done”.

Hopefully now with the Joint Commission’s new Center for Transforming Healthcare we will start to see how best practices can be learned and followed.