Best Practices, LLC examined the world-class practices of pharmaceutical companies and compared structure, staffing, roles and responsibilities in the quality function.  Insights in this report will help executives at pharmaceutical and medical device companies identify critical performance gaps and provide specific direction for marked improvement. 

This research on the quality function uncovered important insights affecting pharmaceutical companies. Best Practices, LLC identified and profiled many of the tactics and most effective practices embedded in these companies’ winning strategies. Here are just a couple of practices that survey data and best practice interviews revealed:

• Beef up training and certification programs– Knowledgeable employees who are prepared to make tough decisions are crucial to an organization’s overall success in the quality arena.  Training and certification programs take center stage as companies seek to integrate new hires and promotions within the quality function as well as keep existing employees current on advancements in the field.
• Strengthen auditing roles — A well-developed auditing function is the greatest defense that any company has against regulatory difficulties, production shutdowns, recalls and other such manufacturing difficulties.  Building an effective auditing function requires going beyond merely identifying issues with batches before they leave the plant.  While this is a crucial task, successful auditing functions also uncover larger systemic problems and monitor improvement efforts.
• For more on the report, go to http://www3.best-in-class.com/bestp/domrep.nsf/Content/101AC66C6E724A4F85256F4000714E70!OpenDocument

TO READ ABOUT THE NEW BOOK, AMERICA’S TUNNEL VISION–HOW INSURANCE COMPANIES PROPAGANDA IS CORRUPTING MEDICINE AND LAW, BY MICHAEL TOWNES WATSON, CLICK HERE

The report by the IOM states that, according to one estimate, in any given week four out of every five U.S. adults will use prescription medicines, over-the-counter (OTC) drugs, or dietary supplements of some sort, and nearly one-third of adults will take five or more different medications.  Most of the time these medications are beneficial, or at least they cause no harm, but on occasion they do injure the person taking them. Some of these “adverse drug events [ADEs],” as injuries due to medication are generally called, are inevitable–the more powerful a drug is, the more likely it is to have harmful side effects, for instance–but sometimes the harm is caused by an error in prescribing or taking the medication, and these damages are not inevitable. These errors can be prevented.  There are 1.5 million such errors every year.At the urging of the Senate Finance Committee, the United States Congress mandated that Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services sponsor the study, now complete and available at the IOM website. www.IOM.edu. 

The author of this report, a professor Goldman, at Harvard Medical School, says “Patient-safety experts stress that complex, error-prone systems are at the root of most mistakes in health care. Archaic, poorly designed systems often undermine the best efforts of well-intentioned, highly motivated clinicians and health care personnel to provide safe care. A major goal of contemporary patient-safety programs is to encourage a culture of safety and create a blame-free environment in which errors are seen as a by-product of bad systems, not as caused by bad or incompetent people. This orientation toward improving systems rather than blaming people who make mistakes is critical, since it encourages caregivers to report adverse events and near misses that might be preventable in the future. Improvement is impossible without such reports, which permit hospitals to gain an understanding of the factors that lead to mistakes and create systems that support safer practices. Although reports tend to focus on major, dangerous errors that occur relatively infrequently, lower-profile mistakes that many caregivers make virtually every day, such as not washing their hands, also need to be documented and understood if the systems are to be improved.^“

^{For a link to this article, click on the link below:}

http://content.nejm.org/cgi/content/full/355/2/121?query=TOC

The Today Show of July 12 featured segment on the ways that patients can go about finding the right physicians.  The segment featured several doctors who acknowledge that decisions on finding the right specialists may be a decision between life or death.  Doctors on the show also state that physicians and hospitals have not been williing to provide information about success rates and quality of care. There are “few public report cards,” according to the experts.  This segment points out the difficulties that patients face. Yet, insurance companies want these decisions to be made at the cost of life or limb, with no justice system available for those who unwittingly make the wrong choices. See link on www.msnbc.msn.com.

CHICAGO, June 8, 2006 – Martin J. Hatlie, JD, president, Partnership for Patient Safety (p4ps) wrote the foreword to a new book entitled, “Patients as Partners: How to Involve Patients and Families in Their Own Care.” Written and published by Joint Commission Resources, Inc., the book takes a close look at the best models of patient-centered care so far developed in the United States.

“In the United States we are just at the beginning of moving from the rhetoric of patient partnership to implementation,” said Hatlie. “For those looking for best existing practices, Patients as Partners: How to Involve Patients and Families in Their Own Care is a very valuable tool.”

Boston Globe Health reporter, Alice Dembner, reports on the state of basic medical care at nursing home facilities.  The report states that “Tens of thousands of nursing home residents must be sent to the hospital each year because of a breakdown in basic medical care at the facilities, specialists say, a scenario that exposes frail elderly people to unnecessary trauma and illness.”  For full story, see link at: http://www.boston.com/yourlife/health/aging/articles/2006/07/03/nursing_homes_seen_deficient_on_basic_care/