Federal Employee Health Benefits

Kaiser Permanente Hawaii Patient Safety Initiatives

Kaiser Permanente Hawaii's drug utilization review (DUR) programs include:

• Physician profiling of high risk, high use, and/or high cost drugs
• Physician education on target disease states/drug therapies
• Physician profiling of non-formulary drug use
• Medication use evaluations of identified medications (high risk, high use or high cost drugs)
• Disease state evaluations

All DUR programs are reviewed/evaluated by the Kaiser Permanente Pharmacy & Therapeutics Committee.

At Kaiser Permanente Hawaii, prescribers have complete access electronically to all drugs prescribed/ordered/picked up for and by the patient.

Kaiser Permanente Hawaii is committed to endeavoring to provide the safest possible environment for our patients and staff.

• Physicians and staff receive training on basic patient safety measures with annual updates.
• Selected physicians and managers receive training in tools and techniques to anticipate unsafe situations and to intervene to prevent them. These include Human Factors and Failure Mode and Effects Analysis, processes proven effective in safety programs of the airline industry.
• Kaiser Permanente Hawaii has created a blame-free culture of responsible reporting where staff and physicians use an online unusual occurrence reporting format to report mistakes, close calls and other unusual occurrences. Events are reviewed by quality staff and appropriate improvement teams convene to improve high-risk processes and systems.
• Kaiser Permanente Hawaii includes an open-ended question on the hospital patient satisfaction survey that asks patients to identify concerns or issues they had regarding patient safety while in the hospital. Information is aggregated, presented to the Patient Safety Work Group and is used in facility planning and design, design of new services, planning of staff training and education programs, etc.