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NIX HEALTH ANNOUNCES NEW PATIENT SAFETY INITIATIVE
San Antonio, Texas (March 9, 2011) – In celebration of National Patient Safety Week (March 7-11), Nix Health is taking an important step in making measurable and lasting improvements to patient safety, by implementing MERS, a medical event report platform that will assist healthcare providers, with identifying and isolating factors that contribute to medical errors furthering Nix Health’s commitment to providing high quality patient care.
Nix Health, one of the 16 founding members of the GE Patient Safety Organization (PSO), is working with GE Healthcare to minimize risks in patient care. GE’s PSO provides its members a single common medical event reporting platform (MERS), with comprehensive data analytics to identify the root causes of risk, and advisory support to help hospitals implement and sustain safety improvements.
“At Nix Health, patient safety is of the utmost importance,” said John F. Strieby, Nix Health President and CEO, “and we are dedicated to reducing risks where ever possible. MERS is yet another measure of safety that will assist Nix Health nurses and doctors* in maintaining our standard of excellence.”
Established by Congress in 2005, Patient Safety Organizations serve as independent, external entities that collect, analyze and aggregate information on patient safety events. GE’s PSO distinguishes itself by the way it captures and analyzes data. The data is captured through MERS, a fourth generation web based event reporting system that is used by all of the members. MERS enables members to not only capture more event reports and near misses, but to also capture more data in each report. The result is a powerful dataset that is aggregated and protected in the PSO.
“The GE PSO has the elements necessary – reporting, analytics and advisory - to help hospitals make measurable and lasting improvements in patient safety,” said Jan De Witte, President and CEO, GE Healthcare Performance Solutions. “GE Healthcare has a long term commitment to helping the healthcare industry reduce cost, improve quality and increase access and we will continue to invest in new technology capabilities and programs that improve overall performance.”
The GE PSO provides a safe community for healthcare professionals to network and focus on patient safety challenges, problems and solutions. MERS will enable the team at Nix Health to safely and securely collect event data of all types from member hospitals in order to build a robust, reliable and relevant database that provides insights into patient safety issues, process improvement and quality assurance activities.
The system will begin being used in patient care areas at all of Nix Health’s facilities this summer.
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About Nix Health
Nix Health offers San Antonio and the surrounding communities a vast array of medical services ranging from primary care and surgical services to behavioral and rehabilitation services. Accessible and comprehensive services are available at five locations, Nix Medical Center, Nix Alamo Heights, Nix Specialty Health Center, Nix Primary Care Center and Nix North Orthopaedic Center. For more information on Nix Health call 210.271.1800 or visit www.nixhealth.com.
About MERS:
MERS International, originally founded in the Netherlands with a New York-based U.S. subsidiary, is dedicated to improving patient care through innovative, information-based patient safety solutions. MERS International is the exclusive licensee of a robust and proven medical event reporting system (MERS), initially developed at Columbia University, that is now installed at over 40 healthcare facilities throughout the United States. Through the systemic collection, investigation, communication, reporting and monitoring of information about near miss and actual events, MERS empowers healthcare professionals and organizations to improve patient safety and quality of care.
About GE Healthcare:
GE Healthcare provides transformational medical technologies and services that are shaping a new age of patient care. Our broad expertise in medical imaging and information technologies, medical diagnostics, patient monitoring systems, drug discovery, biopharmaceutical manufacturing technologies, performance improvement and performance solutions services help our customers to deliver better care to more people around the world at a lower cost. In addition, we partner with healthcare leaders, striving to leverage the global policy change necessary to implement a successful shift to sustainable healthcare systems.
Our “healthymagination” vision for the future invites the world to join us on our journey as we continuously develop innovations focused on reducing costs, increasing access and improving quality around the world. Headquartered in the United Kingdom, GE Healthcare is a unit of General Electric Company (NYSE: GE). Worldwide, GE Healthcare employees are committed to serving healthcare professionals and their patients in more than 100 countries. For more information about GE Healthcare, visit our website at www.gehealthcare.com.
For the latest GE Healthcare news, please visit http://newsroom.gehealthcare.com.
*Physicians are independent practitioners and active members of Nix Health medical staff.
