The World Health Organization Collaborating Centre on Patient Safety, the World Alliance for Patient Safety, and the Commonwealth Fund have announced a seven-country collaborative project that will leverage international experience with patient-safety solutions to prevent avoidable catastrophic events in hospitals. The WHO Collaborating Centre is led by the Joint Commission on Accreditation of Healthcare Organizations and its affiliate Joint Commission International. The overall goal of the “High 5s” initiative is to reduce or eliminate the following five highly prevalent patient-safety problems in selected hospitals in each country over a five-year period: patient care hand-over errors; wrong site/wrong procedure/wrong person surgical error; continuity of medication errors; high-concentration drug errors, and inadequate hand-hygiene practices. The Collaborating Centre will work with the participating countries (Australia, Canada, New Zealand, UK, US, Germany, and the Netherlands) to develop standardized operating protocols similar to those used in high reliability industries such as aviation and nuclear energy.
Each of the seven countries will identify a technical lead agency to coordinate the High 5s initiative within its borders. Approximately 10 hospitals in each country will be enrolled in the project, and each hospital will select up to five safety solutions from among those identified. The impact of the safety solutions will be measured using a package of tools that will include patient-safety indicators (developed by the U.S. Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality), root cause analyses of indicator events and other adverse events, periodic organization culture assessments, and economic impact indices. "We want this to be a truly collaborative effort, with all participants sharing what they’ve learned as they implement the various standardized operating protocols," said Dennis O’Leary, President of the Joint Commission. "We will have a project website that is specifically designed to exchange and disseminate knowledge and innovative ideas about improving patient safety."
