Contact: Ryan Davenport, 612.672.4164

MINNEAPOLIS (March 5, 2007) – Taking transparency to a new level, Fairview Health Services is posting dozens of its own patient care safety and quality scores on the Internet. The measures show some of Fairview’s clinical strengths and point to areas where there is room for improvement.

“Publishing our measures is the right thing to do,” says Alison Page, Fairview chief safety officer. “Government agencies, payers and the public increasingly expect access to health care quality and safety data. Our goals are to encourage visitors to be active participants in their health care, and for us to be transparent about our care outcomes.”

The site shows, for example, that in 2006, 95-percent of patients treated for a heart attack at a Fairview hospital received all the right care, compared with 88-percent nationally. It also shows that 76-percent of Fairview patients received the right care for high blood pressure. That compares to a statewide average of 68 percent (2005 data).

The Patient Safety and Clinical Quality site goes live March 5, the start of National Patient Safety Week. The site is located at www.fairview.org, under the “About Fairview” section (www.fairview.org/patient_safety).

Organized according to the Institute of Medicine’s six aims of care, the site was created to help users understand how Fairview is working to ensure patients receive care that is safe, effective, patient-centered, timely, efficient and equitable.

Drawing on scientific evidence

The measures published on the site are based on scientific evidence, often in collaboration with state and national quality and safety initiatives, according to Page.

For example:

• The “safe care” section measures Fairview’s progress on internal measures addressing hand hygiene, medication reconciliation, patient identification and patient fall rates. The safe care page also features Fairview’s reported incidences of the 27 types of serious events that are part of Minnesota’s Adverse Health Event reporting law.

• Users can click on “heart attack” and learn about the disease, then view charts showing what percentage of patients at Fairview hospitals receive 100 percent of the right care—the “appropriate care measure.” Where available, comparative data show how Fairview’s care stacks up to state or national averages.

• An “About This Site” page defines appropriate care, while providing users with safety tips and suggestions for how to be involved in their care.

• The “effective care” section contains information about several Fairview hospital and clinic care processes and outcomes. Users can click on diseases and conditions, read about them and then view charts to see how effectively Fairview’s care has met defined criteria.

• “Patient-centered care” and “timely care” sections contain measures pulled from Fairview’s patient satisfaction survey results. Charts show how well Fairview patients think they are involved in their care plans. For example, one chart shows: “Clinic patients who agree that health care providers include them and their family in care decisions.”

What do other systems report?

Public reporting isn’t new to the health care industry or to Fairview. Several quality reporting organizations, such as Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, the Joint Commission and Leapfrog Group have reported hospitals’ quality measures for several years.

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