Healthcare Organizations Using KaiNexus Software to Drive National Patient Safety Week Improvements

Feb. 28, 2013 - PRLog -- DALLAS – KaiNexus, a web and iOS-based software company that “makes improvement easier” for healthcare organizations across the United States, announced today they have challenged their customers to focus next week’s improvement efforts on the annual National Patient Safety Week that is being held March 3 through 9.

Staff members, physicians, and leaders at KaiNexus customer sites routinely use the system to capture, track, and document improvements that are made to processes, systems, and patient care.  Looking across all KaiNexus customer sites, 11% of completed “Opportunities for Improvement” (or OIs) have had a positive impact on patient safety, with the remainder of OIs improving quality, cost, and patient or staff satisfaction.

CEO and co-founder Gregory Jacobson MD sent an email to over 250 departmental and organizational leaders at the various customer sites, asking them to use the KaiNexus system’s built-in “challenge” functionality to specifically ask staff to focus this next week on identifying and removing potential risks to patient safety.

Jacobson stated, “The fastest improving healthcare systems are more than aware that too many patients have been harmed by our health system.  Studies show a majority of these errors and instances of harm are indeed preventable by having better processes, better teamwork, and more robust systems.  The most important motivation for improvement is safety, and this challenge week will build momentum so improvement continues happening throughout the year.

Mark Graban, KaiNexus’ chief improvement officer and co-author of the book Healthcare Kaizen: Engaging Front-Line Staff in Sustainable Continuous Improvements commented, “Hospitals and health systems are desperately looking for ways to cut costs.  Healthcare professionals are highly motivated to find opportunities to improve patient safety and provide the highest quality outcomes for their patients.  The good news is that better safety and quality leads to lower costs.  Everybody wins when we collaborate on improvement, and KaiNexus makes that easier and more effective.”

Jacobson added, “We are happy our customers are responding positively to this challenge, and we look forward to celebrating their patient safety wins together.”

The KaiNexus software platform, which is based upon the proven improvement principles of “kaizen” (or continuous improvement), has been proven to assist in organizations’ continued innovation and improvement efforts by identifying and implementing a large number of small, low-cost, low-risk ideas that are identified and implemented primarily by front-line staff.  KaiNexus also allows organizations to manage and track larger improvement events and projects.

Kaizen is a core part of the “Lean” management philosophy, based on the practices of Toyota, that has been embraced by leading healthcare systems around the world.  The concepts are presented more fully in Graban’s books Healthcare Kaizen and Lean Hospitals.

The KaiNexus software platform is intended to reduce unnecessary costs accrued by the United States health care system, which squanders $150 billion a year as a result of quality problems and inefficiently-delivered care, according to a report published earlier late last year by the Institute of Medicine.  KaiNexus is also currently pursuing deals with health systems in Canada, Europe, and Australia, as the cost and quality problems faced by the American health system are also a major issue in other countries.    

To learn more about National Patient Safety Week, visit the National Patient Safety Foundation’s website at http://www.npsf.org/events-forums/patient-safety-awarenes....

About KaiNexus

Founded in 2009, KaiNexus “makes improvement easier (http://kainexus.com/home.html)” for healthcare organizations by facilitating communication throughout the entire organization with its web-based technology.  KaiNexus helps to initiate, manage, and spread ideas that come from clinicians and front-line staff, streamlining the management process required for continuous improvement to thrive. It is built for the realities of today’s complex healthcare organizations, helping to better facilitate staff and physician-driven continuous improvement efforts.

The KaiNexus platform has been in use by multiple departments throughout the Vanderbilt University Medical Center since early 2011, after they participated in the development of early versions of the software, starting in 2005.   KaiNexus is now in use in twelve healthcare organizations, including University of North Carolina Health Care System, the urology department of the University of Michigan Health System, Presbyterian Healthcare Services (New Mexico), Cook Children’s Health System and Centra Health.

For more information, visit http://www.KaiNexus.com or find KaiNexus on Twitter, LinkedIn, and Facebook.

Note to Editors

Gregory Jacobson MD, Co-Founder and CEO of KaiNexus, graduated from Washington University in St Louis in 1997 with a BS in Biology.  He attended Baylor College of Medicine from 1997 to 2001.  From 2001 to 2004, he completed a residency in Emergency Medicine at Vanderbilt University Medical Center where he then stayed on as faculty.  Starting in 2004, it was his observation and research of operational inefficiencies and unrealized improvement opportunities that resulted in the creation of a rudimentary software tool at VUMC and, ultimately, the founding of KaiNexus. Jacobson is co-author of “Kaizen: A Method of Process Improvement in the Emergency Department, (http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1553-2712.20...)” published in the journal Academic Emergency Medicine.