Consumers Propose Plan to make U.S. Healthcare System Safe, Compassionate and Just

Consumers Advancing Patient Safety to Present Vision and Action Plan At AHRQ 2nd National Summit on Patient Safety Research

Chicago, November 6, 2003 - Two co-founders of Consumers Advancing Patient Safety (CAPS), a collective voice for patients and their lay caregivers, will present a proposed plan to make the U.S. healthcare system safer at the 2nd National Summit on Patient Safety Research, sponsored by the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ), in Washington, D.C., this Friday, November 7, 2003.

The proposed plan is the product of a consumer-led workshop to advance patient safety which convened at The University of Texas M. D. Anderson Cancer Center in Houston, TX, last month. Participants included consumers and other healthcare stakeholders, including accreditors, researchers, patient safety officers, risk managers, systems performance/improvement personnel, physicians, physician executives, pharmacists, nurses, nursing executives, healthcare consultants, lawyers, management consultants, philanthropists, employers and alternative dispute resolution professionals.

Roxanne J. Goeltz, President and co-founder of CAPS said, "Our mission is three-fold: to be a champion for patient safety in a new healthcare culture that is safe, compassionate and just; to be a voice for individuals and families who suffer harm in healthcare encounters, as well as for the healers who treat them; and to teach the healthcare community what consumers and healers need to know whenever they interact within healthcare systems."

Susan E. Sheridan, Vice President and co-founder of CAPS, added, "Consumers see things the healthcare system misses. When we want to share the important lessons we've learned when healthcare fails, the only avenues we have are adversarial. Litigation or the fear of litigation makes it almost impossible for our feedback to be incorporated into disease control and prevention."

At the Summit this Friday, Goeltz and Sheridan will present the findings of the Houston workshop, which identified six goals:

• Goal #1: Establish a National Consumer-Led Patient Safety Board
• Goal #2: Create Local Consumer-Led Patient Safety Advisory Boards
• Goal #3: Institute a Non-Punitive National Patient Safety Learning/Reporting System
• Goal #4: Establish a National Education Effort on Patient Safety for Providers and Consumers
• Goal #5: Develop a National Patient Safety Awareness Campaign that Emphasizes Patient and Healthcare Community Partnership with Trust and Open Communication
• Goal #6: Put into Place Systems that Provide Just Compensation and Alternative Routes to Justice for Patients who are Harmed in Interactions with the Healthcare

About Consumers Advancing Patient Safety

Consumers Advancing Patient Safety (CAPS) is a national consumer-led research and education group that aims to improve the quality of the American healthcare system through patient-centered, systems-based approaches to risk management and quality improvement. The group was co-founded by Roxanne J. Goeltz, Susan E. Sheridan, MIM, MBA and Martin J. Hatlie, JD, president of the Partnership for Patient Safety (p4ps). Mitchell L. Dvorak, MS, is Executive Director.

Goeltz, a professional air traffic controller from Minneapolis, is a cancer survivor. She also believes she lost her brother to medical error. "My family failed in our responsibility to Mike and the healthcare system failed to support the doctors and nurses who treated him," she said. "We should have been more involved in his care, as active partners with the hospital and the doctors and nurses who treated him. I am motivated by the desire not to have another family experience what mine has by exploring new roles for families and friends of patients."

Sheridan became a patient safety activist after her family experienced two tragic adverse medical events. "We tried hard to avoid litigating against the hospital and doctors involved in my husband's accident, only to be told they could not mediate and we had to sue. Only after the case settled was I able to meet with hospital leaders and really discuss the record-keeping problems that caused my husband Pat's death." The Sheridan family experienced another healthcare system failure when their son Cal's neonatal jaundice went untreated, leading to a kind of severe brain damage called kernicterus. Sheridan has worked nationally with health system agencies to draw attention to this preventable injury.

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For more information on Consumers Advancing Patient Safety, contact Mitchell Dvorak, at (312) 274-9695 or via email at info@patientsafety.org.