New Book on Strategies for Safer Hospital Care

Jan. 31, 2011 - PRLog -- From newborns switched in the nursery to medication mix-ups and hospital-acquired infections, we are all familiar with the horror stories about hospital safety, and unfortunately, the statistics say we aren’t exaggerating. The safety issue in U.S. hospitals has become so profound and embedded, that we cannot hope to fix it without a paradigm shift in our approach. After defining and demonstrating the true depth of this dangerous concern, Safer Hospital Care: Strategies for Continuous Innovation elaborates on the steps required to make that paradigm shift a reality.

A respected and sought out expert on hospital safety, author Dev Raheja draws on his 25 years of experience as a risk management and quality assurance consultant to provide hospital stakeholders with a systematic way to learn the science of safe care. Supported by case studies as well as input from such paradigm pioneers as Johns Hopkins and Seattle Children’s, he explains how to:

•   Adapt evidence-based safety theories and tools taken from the aerospace, nuclear, and chemical industries
•   Identify the combination of root causes that result in an adverse event
•   Apply analytical tools that can effectively measure hospital efficiency
•   Establish evidence between Lean strategies and patient satisfaction
•   Make use of various types of innovation including accidental, incremental, strategic, and radical, and establish a culture conducive to innovation

This practical guide shows how to find solutions that are simple and comprehensive, and can produce a high ROI. To reform hospitals, we must recognize that they are highly dynamic systems that must be fixed systemically. Instead of thinking in terms of continuous improvement, we need to think in terms of continuous innovation. Safe hospital care is not just about doing things right; it is also about breaking old habits, finding new tools and doing the right things.

About the Authors
Dev Raheja is an international consultant to the aviation, medical systems and healthcare industries.  He specializes in breakthrough quality assurance, system safety, and reliability.  His aviation and aerospace clients include NASA, Boeing, Lockheed Martin, Jet Blue Airlines and U.S. Navy.  In the medical device industry his clients include GE Healthcare, Siemens Medical Systems, and Johnson & Johnson.  He has done consulting for several hospitals including Johns Hopkins Hospital, NIH, St. Francis Hospital, and the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center.

Prior to consulting he worked for GE Healthcare as QA Manager, at Cooper Industries as Head of Safety, and at Booz-Allen & Hamilton as a Risk Manager for Baltimore Subway system.  He served as Adjunct Professor at the University of Maryland where he taught graduate courses in safety and reliability.  He is a Fellow of ASQ and former chairman of the Reliability Division.  He is an author of two books, Assurance Technologies Principles and Practices and Zen and the Art of Breakthrough Quality Management.

Safer Hospital Care: Strategies for Continuous Innovation
ISBN: 9781439821022, 200 pp., $59.95

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