Becker's Hospital Review

46 CMO / CARE DELIVERY high-level strategic planning experience on boards and the granular EHR build made for a powerful combination in meetings. Michael Olgren, MD, CMIO at Mercy Health (Grand Rapids, Mich.): I have always enjoyed using technology. As an emergency physician in 2003, I read the user manuals to train myself for our move from paper to an EMR. I prepared for my move into the CMIO role by obtaining a master's degree in medical informatics and then becoming board certified in the field. Marvin Harper, MD, CMIO at Boston Children's Hospital: By being an involved clinician seeking to improve the provider experience and having a strong desire to access the data gathered in the course of care to develop and improve the quality of care we deliver. My background is clinical, and I remain clinically active working in our emer- gency department. Over time, I have additionally sought training in epidemiol- ogy, business and computer science. Louis Capponi, MD, CMIO at Sisters of Leavenworth Health System (Broomfield, Colo.): As an internist, I suppose I gravitate toward complex problem solving, and there are few endeavors more complex than healthcare. When I walked into clinical practice 24 years ago, I saw huge opportunities for improvement and knew that technology could play a role. However, as I got into it I realized that the exciting part wasn't the technology, it was the complexity of leading people and organizations through change. n A card game helped this hospital improve patient safety in 10 minutes a day By Megan Knowles C linical and nonclinical staff at the Rotter- dam Eye Hospital in the Netherlands use a special deck of cards for 10 minutes a day to improve patient safety and boost staff mo- rale, according to an article published in Harvard Business Review. To encourage staff members to work together and reinforce their knowledge of key safety and patient care principles, hospital managers creat- ed a patient safety card game. At the beginning of each shift, hospital team members gather for a brief huddle where em- ployees rate their own mood as green (I'm good), orange (I'm okay but I have a few things I'm con- cerned about) or red (I'm under stress). The team leader then asks if there is anything the team should know to work more effectively to- gether that shift, such as a delay in public trans- port that could make patients late for appoint- ments or a patient with a special need coming in. The leader asks two staff members to draw a card before the meeting ends. Cards either test the team member's knowledge or require him or her to observe something during the shift and report the findings at the next meeting. The knowledge cards, which are changed ev- ery month, review patient care policies. Knowl- edge tests can include listing the five steps in hand hygiene or stating the most common er- rors during medication preparation. Observa- tion assignments include watching colleagues and reporting back on how well they follow hand-hygiene procedures. Although the routine seems simple, Rotterdam Eye Hospital has seen several improvements in service quality since it launched the card game in 2015. The hospital's patient safety audit perfor- mance has improved, and caregiver job satisfac- tion has increased significantly. Playing the game has also encouraged team members to get to know each other better. Several other hospitals and long-term care or- ganizations in the Netherlands also use the card game now. In 2016 and 2017, a nursing home and a rehabilitation center near Rotterdam adopted the huddle and card game and have seen similar patient care and staff morale improvements. n Cancer hospital ads mislead patients about survival chances, report says By Megan Knowles C ancer hospitals often use patient testimonials in advertisements that promote atypical patient experiences and outcomes, ac- cording to an investigation from TruthInAdvertising.org. The yearlong investigation looked at the marketing materials from 50 cancer centers that spent the most on advertising in 2017. Boca Ra- ton, Fla.-based Cancer Treatment Centers of America was at the top of the list, accounting for almost $69 million of the more than $140 million these hospitals spent on advertising, according to the report. The report found almost 90 percent of the cancer centers still op- erating in 2018 (43 of 48) deceptively promoted atypical patient experiences through powerful patient testimonials. TruthInAdvertising.org catalogued more than 700 testimonials fea- turing patients with cancer types that have a less than 50 percent five-year survival rate. "[These patients] have been deceptively used in marketing materials to advance the narrative, either explicitly or implicitly, that treatment at a particular cancer center will provide pa- tients with a therapeutic advantage, allowing them to beat the odds and live beyond five years," the report said. In each testimonial, the cancer center did not clearly disclose that cancer types portrayed in the advertisements have a 50 percent chance or greater of dying within five years. After uncovering these findings, TruthInAdvertising.org filed a com- plaint with the Federal Trade Commission against Cancer Treatment Centers of America and put the other 42 cancer centers on no- tice that they are using deceptive marketing practices. n

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