US Companies Push to Improve Patient Safety

A group of 60 large U.S. companies that collectively insure more than 20 million people is making an effort to reduce medical errors and improve patient safety by encouraging their employees to use hospitals that employ three patient safety measures shown to reduce mistakes. They have agreed to base their purchase of health care on principles promoting these safety measures.

The first safety measure is computerized physician order entry (CPOE), shown to reduce serious prescribing errors in hospitals by more than 50%. The second safety measure is evidence-based hospital referral. Research shows that by referring patients needing complex medical procedures to hospitals offering the best survival odds based on scientifically valid criteria--such as the number of times a hospital performs the procedure each year--a patient's risk of dying could be reduced by more than 30%. The third safety measure is staffing the intensive care unit (ICU) with doctors trained in critical care medicine. Research shows this can reduce the risk of patients dying in the ICU by 10%.

The group of companies, called The Leapfrog Group, includes many major U.S. companies, including General Motors, Textron, GE, IBM, and AT&T. Member companies have all agreed to educate and inform enrollees in their health care plans about patient safety, to reward health care providers for advances in preventing errors, to hold health care plans accountable for implementing the group's purchasing principles, and to build the support of benefits consultants for these principles.

"Coming together with other employers through The Leapfrog Group, we feel confident in our ability to make a difference by harnessing and leveraging our health care purchasing power,” said Lewis. B. Campbell, chairman and CEO of Textron, Inc.