Northern Michigan Regional Hospital is now participating in two recently expanded statewide patient safety collaboratives focused on protecting mothers, newborns and emergency patients.

The patient safety collaboratives, coordinated by the Michigan Health and Hospital Association Keystone Center for Patient Safety and Quality are known as MHA Keystone: Emergency Room and MHA Keystone: obstetrics.  

MHA Keystone: ER seeks to prevent patient harm in hospital emergency rooms by improving safety, reducing overcrowding, and treating sepsis (blood poisoning) in the early stages. Seventy-one hospitals are now participating in this statewide initiative through interventions that will help ensure that the most critically ill patients receive treatment first and reduce the likelihood that a patient will leave a hospital before receiving appropriate care. The MHA Keystone Center has partnered with Lean Transformations Group, LLC, Ann Arbor, in this endeavor.

MHA Keystone: OB seeks to prevent harm to mothers giving birth and their newborn babies. Sixty-seven Michigan hospitals are now participating in the MHA Keystone: OB collaborative, which primarily focuses on timely interventions for elective induction of labor, coordinating a safe progression of labor, and appropriate responses to fetal distress. The interventions for MHA Keystone: OB include improving patient safety through influencing attitudes and practices.

The MHA Keystone Center has partnered with Dr. G. Eric Knox, professor of obstetrics and gynecology at the University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, and Kathleen Rice Simpson, perinatal clinical nurse specialist at St. John’s Mercy Medical Center, St. Louis, Mo., in this endeavor.

“Patient safety and quality is at the very center of what we do,” said Gretchen Schrage, patient safety officer at Northern Michigan Regional Hospital. “Our participation in MHA Keystone: ER and MHA Keystone: OB will further ensure our patients receive the safest, highest quality care and that both patient and staff satisfaction will increase.”

Both initiatives began as pilot projects in the fall of 2008 and have since incorporated the lessons learned through their early stages. These collaboratives, like all coordinated by the MHA Keystone Center, are positioned for success as a result of the center’s ability to bring large numbers of hospitals together in a single improvement initiative, allowing unprecedented collaboration and expedited results.