We take a moment to pause to reflect on the legacy of Lucian Leape, MD, considered by many to be the father of the patient safety movement, who passed away this summer. You might remember that Dr. Leape for his thoughtful and laborious review of medical records of hospitalized patients that identified both things gone right and things gone wrong in their care and that substantiated the need to address iatrogenic and nosocomial infections as well as lack of attention to process.
He was decried at first by the medical establishment and then embraced as a visionary. As a member of the Institute of Medicine’s (now the National Academy of Medicine’s) Quality of Care in America Committee, he was influential in both their “To Err Is Human” and “Crossing the Quality Chasm” reports.
His seminal work was the Medical Practice Study which found that two-thirds of the injuries to patients were caused by errors that appeared to be preventable. He was once asked about one thing he’d like to change about healthcare and he responded “the payment system”. He believed in a salaried model for physicians that could ease the production pressure on them to see more patients in less time rather than focus on the quality of their interactions with patients. It’s food for thought as we strive to deliver on the quintuple aim.
Michigan Multipayer Initiatives 