Vizient provides patient safety and hospital quality tools to MHA

The Missouri Hospital Association (MHA) has entered into an agreement with the Vizient Patient Safety Organization (PSO) that offers Missouri hospitals tools to improve hospital quality and protect patients.

MHA has also made an agreement with Healthcare Services Group (HSG), which along with the Vizient and MHA agreement, combines clinical quality, risk mitigation and patient safety resources of the three organizations into a single toolset.

This agreement, along with MHA’s agreement with Healthcare Services Group (HSG), combines the clinical quality, risk mitigation and patient safety resources of the three organizations into a robust quality and value improvement toolset.

According to MHA, its patient safety offering will increase access to tools, resources and expert guidance for participating hospitals, including increasing the patient safety database.

The comprehensive program offered by the Vizient PSO partnership elevates hospitals’ patient safety initiatives through a wide range of patient safety improvement activities, such as benchmarking performance with peers, identifying potential problem areas and designing tailored processes for improvement.

“The goal of every Missouri hospital is to deliver high quality patient care,” said Herb Kuhn, president and chief executive officer, MHA.

“The combined offerings of MHA, Vizient’s PSO and HSG significantly expand hospitals’ access to expertise and resources for clinical performance improvement, risk mitigation and patient safety. This partnership supports hospitals’ individual and collective efforts by delivering the right tools at the right time — not just to comply with regulations, but to improve care.”

Keith Starke, chief quality officer at Mercy Health in Chesterfield, Missouri, added: “What’s important about this new partnership is that it immediately expands the bandwidth of safety services and reports for Missouri hospitals. Physicians are excited about this new opportunity to accelerate change and improvement in our state.”

Steve Bjelich, president and chief executive officer, Saint Francis Health System, commented: “Quality, safety and risk management are interconnected components of how hospitals create value. Participation in the partnership will offer hospitals breadth and depth of expertise and powerful tools.

“Hospitals participating in quality improvement and population health programs, the Hospital Improvement Innovations Network, Medicare Rural Hospital Flexibility program and other initiatives will be able to align and integrate their efforts.”