Safety Culture in the News

Safety Culture in the News

Hospital Administrators Need to Put Patient Safety Above Profits, Health Expert Argues

Hospital Administrators Need to Put Patient Safety Above Profits, Health Expert Argues

Millenson: “As a study of clinician overconfidence in infection control delicately concluded, providers ‘do not recognize the need for training [for themselves] but express this need for others.’ In that context, we perhaps should not be surprised that 40% of respondents to a recent nationwide survey’ on hospital safety culture agreed that ‘hospital management seems interested in patient safety only after an adverse event happens.’”

Millenson acknowledges some push-back, noting that the Society for Healthcare Epidemiology of America in 2007 made the case that its members didn’t just add to costs but that there’s a genuine “business case for infection control. A dozen years later, infection control specialists still feel they need ‘an administrative champion,’” Millenson writes.