Northwest Hospital Shares Award-Winning Patient Safety Innovation

Dr. Susan Mani presented a talk about Northwest Hospital's award-winning patient safety program at the Maryland Patient Safety Center’s annual conference earlier this month. More than 1,400 health care professionals attended the annual conference.

The Center recently recognized Northwest Hospital with its top honor, the prestigious 2017 Minogue Award for Patient Safety Innovation. The award recognizes an organization within the state that makes a big difference in patient safety with new processes and ideas all geared to improve the care of patients.

The Northwest Hospital program is based on a model called an accountable care unit (ACU) that emphasizes collaboration to improve safety results which involves all employees who works with patients. An interdisciplinary group of Northwest leadership and front-line team members worked together to use the ACU model as a tool to design an innovative blueprint at the hospital that focuses on patient and family-centered care, outcomes and employee engagement.

The new culture of change shares accountability... with employees learning how to better listen to each other and engage each other so they can care for patients and their families in the best ways possible.

The name of Dr. Mani's talk was “Accountable Care Unit Model Creates Culture Change of Shared Accountability to Patient: Safety and Quality Goals.”