Six consecutive Top A ratings for patient safety by The Leapfrog Group, Newsweek's World Best Hospitals Award and Best in State Hospital, Healthgrades and Women's Choice Awards for patient safety demonstrate the high level of safety provided by UConn Health That's clear. This is a testament to the superior quality of care we provide to the people of Connecticut.
Chief Medical Officer Dr. Scott Allen will lead the mission and discuss his journey so far at UConn Health and what safety means to him.
Allen joined UConn Health in 1994 as a medical educator and assistant professor of medicine. He quickly became part of the organizational structure of the Primary Care Internal Medicine Residency (PCIMR) program. He held several positions during his career, and in 2009, then-Chief Nursing Officer (CNO) Ann He and Marie Capo helped establish UConn Health's “Quality Department.” . He assumed the role of Medical Director and Patient Safety Officer for Clinical Effectiveness and Patient Safety at John Dempsey Hospital.
In 2018, he became UConn Health's first Chief Quality Officer (CQO). While serving as CQO, he was promoted to Interim Chief Medical Officer (CMO) in July 2019 and became permanent CMO in July 2021.
As part of our collaboration with the Connecticut Hospital Association, Allen has established high reliability and safety training for all staff. He hosts a morning safety huddle with Caryl Ryan, chief operating officer, chief nursing officer, and vice president of quality and patient care services at the University of California John Dempsey Hospital, and is a member of the Hospital Quality Committee. Chairman, and co-chair of the Clinical Policy Committee. He will support regulatory compliance and policy management, and oversee safety and quality.
Safety means having a safety culture that puts patients first and actively prevents patients from being harmed. For Allen, this means consistently employing our CHAMP behaviors. This means communicating clearly, handing over effectively, paying attention to detail, guiding and coaching others, and practicing and accepting a questioning attitude. As a system, it also means designing reliable, evidence-based, patient-centered care processes so that patient care teams can keep patients out of harm's way.
Enabling safe care is critical to our clinical mission to provide the highest quality care to Connecticut residents. As the only state-supported academic medical center in Connecticut, we are able to prove our value and importance by becoming a premier destination for health care. Excellence in patient safety is a key aspect of that commitment. Our educational mission, at both the undergraduate and graduate medical education levels, is to not only address systems of care designed with safety in mind, but also to engage and learn systems of care that are continually improved through analysis of safety events. It helps teach the principles of high reliability and quality to the participants. Improvement. We are training the next generation of health care workers with safety as our guiding principle. Finally, we share that new knowledge with other health systems, fulfilling our academic mission to leverage and disseminate new knowledge as we design safer systems that are also more effective or efficient. .
Providing safe care means we are achieving key areas of the Institute of Medicine's six goals of quality health care. Safe care generally means reducing costs for patients and health systems by avoiding preventable adverse events. Safe care also helps improve the patient experience. This improves patient experience survey results and performance on external scorecards such as pay-for-performance programs and Leapfrog Hospital Safety Grades. Achieving a consistent Leapfrog “A”, Newsweek World Best Hospital recognition, or Healthgrades Top 10% Patient Experience award can help you grow market share. People flock to his UConn because they know it's a safe, high-quality health care system.
“Every day brings new challenges. I draw inspiration from former leaders who taught me the meaning of safety systems. As a physician, being able to provide individualized care is extremely important and satisfying. But the opportunity to improve the quality and safety of the entire system means we can positively impact more people,” says Allen.
UConn Health is improving safety when staff take a mini-mental timeout of a few seconds, a STAR moment (Stop-Think-Act-Review) to make sure they're doing the right thing, before proceeding with a particular task. embodies. More than 80 people listen and focus on safety in the hospital during a morning safety meeting. As part of our error analysis program, our quality team visits over 30 different clinical areas, debriefs with frontline staff and has the opportunity to brainstorm ways to improve our care system. We have established. Staff involvement in this process demonstrates how committed our organization is to providing safe care.
“UConn has a great workforce that allows us to provide award-winning, excellent care. Everyone is committed to safety and patient-centered care, and being a part of that team is what makes me the best person.” That’s why I love my job,” says Allen.
