A broad and structured approach to improving patient safety and quality: lessons from Denver Health

Abstract

America's health care systems have not achieved the desired level of quality and safety. This may be due, in part, to the lack of clear and robust approaches for institutions to follow. Denver Health, an integrated, public safety-net institution, developed a multifaceted, structured approach to quality and safety improvement that has produced positive outcomes. For example, in 2010 Denver Health ranked first of 112 US academic medical centers in terms of actual mortality observed relative to the national mortality rate. Given these results, we argue that regulatory bodies should refocus their oversight to consider an institution's overall structured approach to quality improvement and safety, instead of monitoring individual small outcomes, such as a patient's receipt of antibiotics for pneumonia within six hours of arriving in the emergency department.