Message from leadership: Dr. Michael Chang

Quality, safety and patient-centered care make up the foundation of our commitment to our patients here at USA Health. We are embarking on an ongoing journey towards high reliability built upon a culture of safety.

This culture of safety has four pillars:

• acknowledgment of the high-risk nature of an organization's activities and the determination to achieve consistently safe operations
• a just environment where individuals are able to report errors or near misses without fear of reprimand or punishment as long as the actions were not reckless
• encouragement of collaboration across ranks and disciplines to seek solutions to patient safety problems
• organizational commitment of resources to address safety concerns

Our implementation of the RL6 Quality Assurance Safety Reporting program over the past few weeks demonstrates our organization’s commitment to creating that culture of safety. We now have a tool to gather the information to help us get to the root causes of any safety and quality concerns that may arise.

In addition, we are moving to consolidate our quality and safety efforts under a single, system-wide umbrella by creating a Quality and Safety Program for the entire healthcare system, including the hospitals and outpatient clinics. Furthermore, in the very near future, we will post reminders to See it; Report it; Resolve it. If you see something of concern, report it so that we can develop the solution that resolves it.

All these efforts are designed to move towards our goal of becoming a highly reliabile organization. These are organizations that operate in complex, high-hazard fields and have no serious accidents or catastrophic failures over long periods of time. They relentlessly prioritize safety and continually look to improve. Additionally, they understand that the changing dynamics of the work environment require constant vigilance so that future problems can be anticipated and reduced or eliminated even before they occur.

As you can imagine, you will be hearing a consistent drumbeat about quality and safety and the significant role each of you plays in helping to move USA Health forward in our mission to help people lead longer, better lives.

Dr. Michael Chang

Chief Medical Officer

USA Health