Anthem Blue Cross recently extended its commitment to the Southern California Patient Safety First (PSF) Collaborative for 2013. PSF provides a forum for peer-to-peer learning, networking and sharing of best practices to improve patient safety and clinical outcomes. 

With the additional funding, the collaborative has maintained two of the existing focus areas, and has introduced two new clinical areas* in which hospitals can improve:

• Sepsis Mortality: Improve early detection and management to decrease your mortality rate by 10% (relative reduction) from your 2012 baseline. 
• Perinatal Safety: Reach and maintain an early elective delivery rate of less than 5% with best practices PSF has developed in the past few years.
• HAI – C. Difficile*: Decrease your C. Difficile infection rate by 10% (relative reduction) with attention to environmental management, hand hygiene, PPE and antibiotic stewardship. 
• Surgical Safety*: Learn reliable and inexpensive systematic approaches to surgical safety to help eliminate the potential for retained surgical items, preventing returns to the OR.

Hospitals participating in the previous PSF collaboratives demonstrated improvement in several key focus areas, with many achieving a zero percent device-related HAI rate (CLABSI, CAUTI, and VAP) and an early elective delivery rate of less than five percent.

Agreement forms for the 2013 cohort have been mailed to current PSF members, and will be mailed to all HASC member hospitals in early January.  The deadline for commitment is Feb. 1, and there is no cost for participation. The 2013 meetings will be held quarterly and will include tools and strategies for all four clinical focus areas, as well as curriculum on leadership, teamwork and enhancing the patient safety culture in health care.

Contact: Julia Slininger
(213) 538-0766, jslininger@hasc.org