Clarity Group's Small and Rural Benchmarking Program Celebrates Two Years of Growth Among Critical Access, Small and Rural Health Systems
Chicago, IL (PRWEB) August 01, 2013 -- Clarity Group, Inc.’s Benchmark for Excellence in Patient Safety™ (BFEPS) Program is entering into its third year of data collection, reporting and shared best practices. Introduced in June of 2011, the program has experienced consistent growth and momentum in building a base of members with over 12,000 events submitted from which to extrapolate patient safety knowledge and facilitate sharing among participants.
Participation in the BFEPS Program is voluntary to those critical access, small and rural facilities that use the Healthcare SafetyZone® Portal (Portal), Clarity’s web-based tool for patient safety data collection, follow-up and analysis. Using the Portal brings great benefit to the management of patient safety at each organization and ensures a common data collection format for the benchmarking process.
The BFEPS Program is the first of its kind for critical access, small and rural facilities. It enables its participants to benchmark on the important areas of falls, medication errors and infection control and allows them to share patient safety best practices with one another. Members of the program meet quarterly, giving them an opportunity to get to know their peers and review the Quarterly Comparison Reports provided by Clarity detailing data collected from the previous quarter.
“What’s interesting and very pleasing to see is that after the first year, member organizations began voluntarily facilitating deeper dives into their collected data, and not simply relying on high-level event reports,” said Tom Piotrowski, Clinical Informatics Director at Clarity Group, Inc. “For example, the group requested a more in-depth look at medication errors and specifically the overall process of medication administration. That then led to a discussion on whether certain tools increase frequency of certain types of errors. This is important because it shows that the members are actively participating in the program and not just passively receiving reports from us every three months. This in turn leads to awareness and understanding that goes beyond incident reporting, such as the culture of safety within an organization.”
Current BFEPS membership includes 53 hospitals from eight states. Clarity expects continued growth in the existing states and anticipates members from several new states in the coming months.
About Clarity Group, Inc.
Clarity Group helps healthcare organizations understand and manage their risk and related costs through innovative and practical tools and services that focus on quality and safety outcomes. Core Clarity products and services include captive insurance company development and operations; risk-quality-safety consulting and educational services; and software solutions that facilitate the reporting, tracking and management of safety and quality events. For more information on Clarity Group, Inc., please visit claritygrp.com.
Nick Hajek, Clarity Group, Inc., http://www.claritygrp.com, (773) 864-8280, [email protected]
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