STANFORD, Calif-- Lucile Packard Children's Hospital at Stanford (LPCH) has received the 2005 Race for Results Award from the Child Health Corporation of America (CHCA). The hospital won the award—the fourth in 12 months for ongoing improvements in patient safety—for a program that significantly reduced the already low number of adverse drug events at the hospital over a two year period. The award will be presented this week at the CHCA’s annual meeting, which will showcase the hospital’s recent successes.
 
“We are extremely proud of our patient safety track record,” said hospital CEO Christopher Dawes. “These awards reaffirm the commitment of the hospital’s leadership and staff to provide the very best in patient care.”
 
Chief Clinical Patient Safety Officer Paul Sharek, MD, MPH, and two of his colleagues will attend the meeting to receive the award and discuss specific changes LPCH made in its medication processes to promote a culture of safety and ultimately reduce the number of adverse drug events by 70 percent over a 24 month period. In addition, Chief Operating Officer Susan Flanagan will speak about how hospital leadership can accelerate patient safety efforts.
 
Patient safety emerged as a national priority after a 1999 Institute of Medicine report stated that 98,000 Americans die each year from preventable medical errors made in hospitals. As a result, hospitals around the country have been striving to implement new procedures to ensure that mistakes are kept to a minimum. LPCH’s Board of Directors made improvements in patient safety the hospital’s number one priority in 2003.
 
The focus has paid off. During the past 12 months, LPCH not only bested 39 other children’s hospitals for the Race for Results Award, it also received perfect scores on two other national surveys: the Leapfrog Group’s ranking of 27 patient-safety practices and the Joint Commission on Accreditation of Healthcare Organizations (JCAHO) survey, which heavily emphasizes patient safety. In a separate survey, the hospital’s incidence of adverse drug events was also shown to be one of the lowest in the nation compared to other children’s hospitals.
 
“LPCH’s leadership can be commended for promoting a world-class culture of safety,” said Sharek, who is also the hospital’s Medical Director of Quality Management. “We’ve become thought leaders in pediatric patient safety, combining nationally respected research with effective techniques to integrate literature-based best practices as soon as they are developed.”
 
LPCH’s entry for the CHCA award documented a three-pronged approach to reducing adverse drug events: streamlining medication ordering, managing high-risk medications and involving front-line staff in patient safety efforts. Working together, Sharek, patient safety program manager Sandra Trotter and pharmacy director Robert Poole, PharmD, were able to significantly surpass their goal of a 40 percent reduction. The trio was gratified, but not completely satisfied, with their success.
 
“Hospital systems, as well as our particular patient population, are extremely complex, making patient safety a continued challenge,” said Sharek. “There is always room for improvement.”
 
About Lucile Packard Children's Hospital
Lucile Packard Children's Hospital at Stanford is a 264-bed hospital devoted to the care of children and expectant mothers. Providing pediatric and obstetric medical and surgical services and associated with Stanford School of Medicine, LPCH offers patients locally, regionally and nationally the full range of health-care programs and services – from preventive and routine care to the diagnosis and treatment of serious illness and injury. For more information about LPCH, please visit www.lpch.org.