Safety is April's Word of the Month and Dr. Scott Allen, Chief Medical Officer is leading the charge and sharing his journey at UConn Health and what safety means to him.
Evident by earning the Leapfrog Group's sixth consecutive top A rating in patient safety, Newsweek's Best Global Hospitals and Best State Hospital awards as well as Healthgrades and Women's Choice awards for patient safety, the level of safety provided at UConn Health is a testament to outstanding quality For the care we provide to the citizens of Connecticut.
Dr. Scott Allen, Chief Medical Officer is leading the charge and sharing his journey at UConn Health and what safety means to him.
Allen joined UConn Health in 1994 as an assistant professor of medicine and a clinical educator. It quickly became part of the organizational structure of the Primary Care Internal Medicine Residency (PCIMR) program. He served in several roles during his career, and in 2009, he helped create the “Department of Quality” at UConn Health alongside its chief nursing officer (CNO) at the time, Anne Marie Capo. He held the roles of Medical Director of Clinical Effectiveness and Patient Safety and Patient Safety Officer at John Dempsey Hospital.
In 2018, he became UConn Health's first chief quality officer (CQO). While still serving as Chief Quality Officer, he was promoted to interim Chief Medical Officer (CMO) in July 2019, and was named permanent CMO in July 2021.
Allen created high-reliability and safety training for all employees as part of a collaboration with the Connecticut Hospital Association. He moderates the Safety Huddle morning show with Caryl Ryan, chief operating officer of UConn John Dempsey Hospital, chief nursing officer and vice president of Quality and Patient Care Services, chair of the hospital's Quality Committee, and co-chair of the Clinical Policy Committee. Assists with organizational readiness and policy management, and oversees safety and quality.
Safety means having a safety culture where we put the patient first and prevent them from getting hurt. For Allen, this means consistent use of our CHAMP behaviors: communicate clearly, deliver effectively, pay attention to detail, mentor and coach others, and practice and embrace questioning behavior. As a system, it also means designing reliable, evidence-based, patient-centered care processes so that the patient care team can always keep patients out of harm's way.
Achieving safe care is important to our clinical mission of providing the best quality of care to the citizens of Connecticut. As the only state-supported academic medical center in Connecticut, we can demonstrate our value and relevance by becoming a leading healthcare destination; Excellence in patient safety is a critical aspect of that journey. For our educational mission, at the undergraduate and postgraduate medical education levels, working in a system of care designed with safety in mind, but also a system that is constantly improving through the analysis of safety events, helps teach our learners the principles of high reliability and quality improvement. We are training the next generation of practitioners with safety as a core principle. Finally, as we design safer systems that may also be more effective or efficient, we share this new knowledge with other health care systems, fulfilling our academic mission to use and disseminate new knowledge.
Providing safe care means we are achieving the leading edge of the Institute of Medicine's six goals of quality health care. Safe care generally means lower cost to the patient and health system by avoiding preventable adverse events. Safe care also helps provide a better patient experience. This then improves patient experience survey scores, which in turn improves performance in pay-for-performance programs as well as external scorecards such as the Leapfrog Hospital Safety Score. A consistent Leapfrog “A” rating, a Newsweek World's Best Hospital rating, or a Healthgrades award for top 10% of patient experiences helps boost market share: People come to UConn because they see us as a safe, high-quality health system.
“Every day brings new challenges. I was inspired by a former mentor who taught me the meaning of a safety system. As a doctor, it is important and satisfying to be able to provide individualized care; however, to have the opportunity to improve the quality and safety of the entire system means that I can I make a positive impact on so many people.”
UConn Health embodies safety when employees take a STAR moment — stop, think, act, review — a few seconds, a small mental timeout before embarking on a specific task, to make sure you're doing the right thing. During the morning safety rally, 80 or more people listen and focus on safety at the hospital. As part of our error analysis program, our quality team visited more than 30 different clinical areas to debrief frontline staff and take the opportunity to brainstorm ways to improve our system of care. Our staff's involvement in this process demonstrated our organization's commitment to delivering care safely.
“UConn provides great, award-winning care because we have great people working here. Everyone's commitment to safety, patient-centered care and being part of this team is why I love what I do,” Allen says.
