Quality and Safety Principles
To meet our mission of excellent patient care, education and research, we make quality and safety priorities.
Quality Improvement Guiding Principles
- Our strategic goals and targets serve as the driving force for continuous process improvement, and aid in establishing priorities for decision making.
- Every staff and faculty member is expected to be involved in the Michigan Quality System process.
- The organization’s process improvement model of “plan-do-check-act” (P-D-C-A) is used to improve and evaluate new and existing processes.
- Process improvement strategies and teams keep the customer as the focus and engage and organize individuals closest to the work process to be improved.
- Process improvement strategies and teams are partnerships among disciplines, programs, and faculty, staff, and union and management leadership.
- Performance standards designated by The Joint Commission, as well as other regulatory and accrediting agencies are consistently met.
- Staff and faculty receive the necessary training to develop the skills and receive the support needed to sustain continuous improvement efforts.
- “Best practices” will be based on evidence when it exists, and process improvement efforts and “best practices” are regularly communicated throughout the organization.
- Valid and reliable measurement tools track performance results.
Our Patient Safety Principles
In support of our goals and objectives, leadership and staff have committed to the following patient safety principles:
- Safety is the responsibility of everyone.
- A non-punitive environment of trust must be created and maintained where injuries, mistakes, adverse consequences of care, and “near misses” can be reported confidentially.
- Every employee plays a critical role in identifying conditions that may result in harm to patients or staff.
- Any event, or potential event, that compromises patient or staff safety should provide an opportunity to learn how to prevent future occurrences.
- Review of serious or sentinel events will be undertaken by the approved process.
- Timely feedback regarding root cause of injury or error, any interventions resulting from the analysis, and an improvement plan will be provided.
- New information, or changes in process resulting from analysis, will be communicated to staff in a timely manner.
At the University of Michigan Health System, quality and safety go hand in hand.
