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September 2013 - In This Issue
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Looking for a past issue? Click here.
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Thank you for reviewing INSIGHT, a newsletter outlining news and events at The Sullivan Group, and providing valuable advice and tips from the esteemed members of our Advisory Board.
Dan Sullivan, MD, JD, FACEP
President & CEO
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Please follow this link to sign up/update your delivery preferences for INSIGHT, The Sullivan Group's Advisory Board eLearning Newsletter. Published every month, it features tips, articles and cases from the esteemed TSG Advisory Board. |
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SAVING LIVES.
REDUCING RISK.
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Leveraging Continuing Education for Nurses & Physicians to bring about meaningful change.
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The Sullivan Group offers a series of scalable, comprehensive loss prevention and patient safety programs, specifically targeted at reducing medical errors and malpractice claims across the spectrum of high-risk medicine.
The RSQ® Solutions (Risk–Safety–Quality) programs are tailored for a variety of medical and nursing specialties and based on a proven cyclical model of continuous quality improvement that drives change, strengthens clinical performance, and reduces risk exposure.
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New Programs!
C.O.R.E:
Captive Online Risk Education
Engage with Insureds
The Sullivan Group (TSG) has designed an affordable, immediate continuing education solution to meet the loss prevention goals of captives and risk retention groups. This program is easy to implement and access, and the entry point can be customized with your company's logo and color schematic. Authored by TSG's RSQ Advisory Board, a group of clinical experts/champions, these relatable courses will help you to better engage your insureds and enable you to stay in front of them with current medical malpractice issues.
The Sullivan Group courses delve directly into the clinical behaviors that result in harm to patients and costly medical malpractice claims. We recommend the following curriculum, but encourage you to rotate in any of our courses to meet specific needs.
Year One
- Essentials of Patient Safety
- Technology Revolution: Improving Patient Safety, Reducing Liability
- Cognitive Errors in Medicine Part 1
Year Two
- 11 Simple Strategies to Prevent Medication Errors
- Handoffs, Transitions & Discharges: Key Moments in Patient Care
- Cognitive Errors in Medicine Part 2
Year Three
- Communication Strategies to Improve Patient Safety in High-Risk Situations
- Medical Assault & Battery
- Duty to Warm Third Parties
Set up couldn't be easier... Provide us with your logo and a list of participants; we'll enroll them for courses and notify them automatically. Rapid implementation. Programs launch in a matter of days. Contact us today and be up and running next week!
*Suggested courses were developed to address the most current and anticipated topics that promote a consistent culture of safety and prevent risk for all physicians -- please ask about our comprehensive specialty specific solutions. Contact Karen Ragland to learn more.
Best Care Lowest Cost Bundle: Aligning Patient Safety and Risk Education with Quality Improvement Initiatives to Reduce Hospital Readmissions
A comprehensive educational program designed to change behavior to increase the quality and efficiency of care for front line staff/at the bedside.
With the increased access to care afforded under the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA), we anticipate an adjustment period whereby hospitals will note a decrease in the quality of care provided to patients as a function of volume. To get ahead of this anticipated trend, we recommend a comprehensive program for the entire healthcare team to outline how they can make little changes in their approach that have great returns on the whole.
In response, TSG recommends a specific curriculum for quality improvement through risk mitigation and increased patient safety awareness. Contact Karen Ragland to learn more.
Course Updates
We are pleased to announce the release of evidence-based updates to the following courses:
**Significant Updates! The latest evidence-based medicine best practices were added to each of the courses listed above. As such, we recommend reassignment of the material.**
CME Courses in Development
The TSG faculty and staff are currently working on the following courses. We will keep you posted on our progress, but please do not hesitate to contact us to learn more about what we have planned for each topic.
- Disclosure & Early Resolution Programs
- Communicating Bad News
- Handoffs, Transitions & Discharges: Key Moments in Patient Care - LAUNCHED!
- Workplace Violence, Disruptive Behavior & Hostile Environment in Healthcare
- 7 Simple Strategies to Reduce Readmissions
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ENA Conference: Sept. 17–19, 2013, Gaylord Opryland Resort & Convention Center (Nashville, TN)
ACEP Scientific Assembly: Oct. 14–17, 2013,
Washington State Convention Center (Seattle, WA)
Booth No. 825
ASHRM Annual Conference: Oct. 27–30, 2013, Austin Convention Center (Austin, TX)
Booth No. 601
IMAC Cayman Captive: Dec. 3–5, 2013,
The Ritz Carlton (Grand Cayman)
Faculty Speaking Engagements
Meet Shelley Cohen, RN, MSN, CEN, on September 10, 2013. She is presenting the New Manager Intensive at the Nursing Management Congress in Chicago.
Dan Sullivan, MD, JD, FACEP, Tom Syzek, MD, FACEP, and Doug Finefrock, DO, are all speaking at ACEP.
Webinars
We are conducting webinars to provide an overview of some of the latest product releases and enhancements on the following dates. Please join us.
- August 27th, 1:00pm ET
- September 3rd, 1:00pm ET
Please RSVP to Karen Ragland (kragland@thesullivangroup.com).
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| We appreciate this month's contributions from the following members of The Sullivan Group Advisory Board. For more information about the Board, please click here. |
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Top 5 Ways to Make a Great First Impression with your Patients
- Smile and make Eye Contact when you enter the room.
- Respectfully Shake Hands with everyone in the room.
- Acknowledge the Wait and Apologize for it.
- Perform at least one kind Non-Medical Gesture.
- Overestimate the Time.
The above tips are from the PatientSET™ program. Each course in the PatientSET™ series addresses specific techniques and approaches to improve the patient experience.
Follow this topic: PatientSET 
- PatientSET™ #1: Introduction to Patient Satisfaction for All Healthcare Providers
- PatientSET™ #2: Hospital Best Practice High–Risk Videos
- PatientSET™ #3: Office Best Practice High–Risk Videos
- PatientSET™ #4: Introduction for Nurses – in development
- PatientSET™ #5: HCAHPS Scenarios for Nurses – in development
- PatientSET™ #6: Healthcare Customer Service for Nurses – in development
- PatientSET™ #7: Healthcare Customer Service for Non–licensed Employees – in development
- PatientSET™ #8: Healthcare Customer Service Videos for Triage Nurses – in development
Click Here for a Preview of a Course (this will open up a Flash Player window)
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Shelley Cohen, RN, MSN, CEN
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Triage Qualifications
In 2011, the Emergency Nurses Association (ENA) published a position on the qualifications necessary for the role of triage nurses in the Emergency Department (ED) setting. This pivotal document delineates the necessary knowledge and skills as well as the expected attributes of character and professionalism for triage nurses. he document states that each patient arriving by EMS should have a triage level assigned, even if they go directly to a patient care exam area - this implies that almost all of ED nursing staff are making sorting decisions. As such, triage-related requirements should be included in all ED nurse job descriptions.
The position also emphasizes that time and experience alone as an ED nurse may not adequately prepare the nurse for the role of triage. Triage is truly risky business and attention to the following will help organizations to minimize risk;
- Assure triage staff are well prepared with foundational knowledge of triage.
- Establish a method to validate nurses' ability to apply the qualities identified by ENA.
- Review triage policy, guidelines, and protocols to confirm they are realistic and demographically appropriate for the department.
- Ensure staff are following current implementation versions of scoring practices (e.g., evidence-based ESI or CTAS, etc.) for triage criteria.
Source: Emergency Nurses Association (2011) Triage Qualifications, http://www.ena.org/SiteCollectionDocuments/Position%20Statements/TriageQualifications.pdf
Featured Courses:
- Triage Fundamentals: A comprehensive suite of courses (ranging in length from one to two hours) targeting risk issues in triage nursing. Eight of the eleven courses are live, and cover topics such as "the risky business of triage," practice standards, assessment and documentation, etc.
- PatientSET™ #6: Healthcare Customer Service for Nurses – in development
- PatientSET™ #7: Healthcare Customer Service for Non–licensed Employees – in development
- PatientSET™ #8: Healthcare Customer Service Videos for Triage Nurses – in development
Click here to access a list of all Triage courses.
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Arnie Mackles, MD, MBA, LHRM
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Risk Management & Patient Safety
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7 Ways Clinical Providers Can Reduce Hospital Readmissions
Healthcare providers are under pressure to compete to offer the best record of patient quality and safety at the lowest prices. There are a few simple techniques that can improve quality, reduce liability and manage costs in the new era of healthcare reform. Below are just a few considerations for improving readmission rate; each of these is addressed in greater detail in the courses featured below.
- Targeting "At Risk" Patients
- Effective Communication
- Quality Performance Measures
- Coordination and Continuity of Patient Care
- Effective Discharge Planning
- Medication Reconciliation
- Patient Safety and Satisfaction
- In-Hospital Preventative Health Measures
- Risk reduction for healthcare-associated infections
- Safety of handoffs (medical information, and patients)
Featured Courses:
- 7 Simple Strategies to Reduce Readmissions - in development
- Handoffs, Transitions & Discharges: Key Moments in Patient Care
- Essentials of Patient Safety
- Communication Strategies to Improve Patient Safety in High-Risk Situations
- 11 Simple Strategies to Prevent Medication Errors
- Technology Revolution: Improving Patient Safety, Reducing Liability
**These courses and others are now a part of TSG's Best Care at Lowest Cost Bundle, a curriculum designed to impact the behaviors and areas of clinical care that most frequently result in readmissions.
Click here to review all of the courses available under this topical area.
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Protocols
Formally a dirty word for most obstetricians, protocols for a myriad of obstetrical situations and procedures are now not only ubiquitous but are being well received by clinicians. For one thing protocols are usually evidence-based summaries of the best and safest ways to handle a certain situation. For another, protocols help avoid confusion between obstetricians and nurses in the Labor & Delivery unit and even between different physicians in the same practice caring for each other's patients. By decreasing the complexity that results from each physician doing things his or her own way, having uniform protocols reduces the chance of error and thus improves patient safety.
The Sullivan Group is honored to work with Dr. Henry Lerner. Dr. Lerner has extensive experience in the area of obstetric medical liability, a subject on which he has been speaking and writing for many years. Dr. Lerner's interest in this area stems from his 33 years of practice as a community ob-gyn, his service as a Board member of a leading national medical malpractice carrier, and his work in helping to defend over 300 obstetricians from across the country in medical malpractice litigation. Dr. Lerner is currently developing a comprehensive educational program for obstetrics.
Follow Henry 
Websites: www.henrylerner.com
http://shoulderdystociainfo.com
Follow this topic: RSQ_OB
Featured Courses:
- Neonatal Emergencies - in development
- Postpartum Hemorrhage
- Neonatal Asphyxia
- Ectopic Pregnancy in Obstetrics & Gynecology
- Pitfalls & Liability Risks in Labor - in development
- Pitfalls & Liability Risks in Prenatal Care - in development
- Shoulder Dystocia
- Anatomy of a Medical Negligence Lawsuit in Obstetrics & Gynecology
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The Sullivan Group is accredited by the Accreditation Council for Continuing Medical Education to provide continuing medical education for physicians.
Some continuing education activities were approved by the Emergency Nurses Association, an accredited approver of continuing nursing education by the American Nurses Credentialing Center's Commission on Accreditation.
The details of the CME and/or CE for all TSG activities can be found here.
Copyright © 1998 - 2013, The Sullivan Group, All Rights Reserved. These materials comprise the proprietary information of The Sullivan Group. Unauthorized use, copying or dissemination of these materials is strictly prohibited.
U.S. Patent No. 7,197,492 |
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