Patient Safety Collaborative
The Milwaukee Patient Safety Collaborative (MPSC) is a task force of the Community Collaboration on Healthcare Quality (CCHQ), a committee of the Medical Society of Milwaukee County. It is the group’s intent to provide patient safety outcomes the entire community can celebrate. The collaborative is comprised of quality and safety leaders from member organizations, and its primary mission is to provide a structure for area healthcare providers to work together to develop, share and implement effective patient safety solutions within the community. Its goals are:
- Improvement of coordination among organizations.
- Collaboration with participating organizations to identify best practices and reduction of waste and redundancy.
- Improvement of overall community health outcomes.
- Reduction of the instance of adverse events and, in the process, reduction of health care costs.
- Utilization of shared learning to improve outcomes.
Past projects of the MPSC include partnering with fourteen area hospitals and several local pharmacies to evaluate how abbreviations in high-risk prescription orders are written. After the collaborative’s suggestions were implemented, final results showed significant improvement in abbreviation use, particularly in organizations that use electronic order entry. The collaborative also publishes information on safe medication disposal and collection activities for the public and, in 2004, raised patient awareness on the importance of presenting a complete list of medications to practitioners by distributing over 200,000 medication list sheets in both English and Spanish. In 2009, the MPSC successfully standardized colors for hospital patient wristbands across the state.
Current projects include publication of a FAQ on safe medication disposal, publication of a list of medication safety tips for children, and an initiative to implement the use of clear text paging in hospitals.
The MPSC provides the following patient resources for practices to distribute:
