Federal Employee Health Benefit

Paramount Health Care Patient Safety Initiatives

Response to Patient Safety Section of 2004 FEHB RFI

1. Paramount has a comprehensive patient safety program with five key areas.
   • Taking Care of Yourself – Getting Patients to Ask Questions
   • Making Sure Care Meets Needs and Fits Together
   • Giving Extra Attention to People At Risk of Falling or Getting Hurt
   • Using the Right Medicines and Health Supplements in the Right Way
   • Keeping Patients from Getting Infections

   Information about the Paramount Patient Safety Program is found on our website. There are lots of handouts at the website that can be printed for more help. Type or hyperlink to www.paramounthealthcare.com and then select Member Services > Member Health Information > Patient Safety for Members. Primary care doctors also have paper copies of all these same handouts to give to patients at the office.

2. Paramount strives to enhance the culture of safety exhibited by practitioners and health care delivery organizations that provide care to our membership. Factors that describe this challenge include medication safety through concurrent drug utilization review, accident prevention to reduce encounters for traumatic care, and promotion of informed decision-making by patients and patient advocates.

   The Paramount Electronic Prescribing Tool involves the implementation of an automated prescription-writing product called AllScripts. AllScripts features a hand-held palm-pilot prescribing tool allowing physicians to view member specific formulary information. Physicians are able to perform paperless prescription writing and automatic transfer of prescriptions to the patient's pharmacy. The goal is to steer prescribing to generics and preferred brand products. Since prescriptions are sent automatically to pharmacies via fax, prescription legibility is improved. There are currently about 50 physicians using the product. It is in the test phase to measure the cost impact of using the tool. The project commenced with an internal medicine office summer 2003.

   We also promote patient safety directly with Paramount members at events such as the annual safety fair, at educational forums, and through newsletter articles and on the Paramount website.

3. One factor used by Paramount to assess acculturation of patient safety is the willingness of provider organizations to publicly report their progress and outcomes to The Leapfrog Group™ and the CMS National Voluntary Hospital Reporting Initiative. The on-going Quality of Care process also serves as an assessment of patient safety, as exhibited by Paramount practitioners. Two quantifiable measures of Paramount's promotion of patient safety directly to members are (1) the number of members reached directly at events and (2) the number of member newsletter articles published.