Why Safety Programs Fail -- And How to Ensure Yours Don't 

The Re-Engineered Discharge (RED) program is a recently-developed strategy to reduce readmissions in hospital settings. According to a paper published about the project in BMC Health Services Research, "Project RED is comprised of twelve components focused on key aspects of the discharge process, including patient education, medication reconciliation, communication with and among health professionals, and follow-up care."

This initiative has been adapted by systems across the country, though little is known about the program's sustainability and impact. The recent study aimed to identify the factors that influence adaptation and implementation of RED and the impact of those factors on the program's sustainability.

The researchers found that the sustainability of RED "was only possible when hospitals approached the implementation as a transformational process rather than a patient safety project, maintained a high level of fidelity to the RED protocol, and had leadership and an implementation team who embraced change and failure in the pursuit of better patient care and outcomes." They noted that facilities which lacked any combination of those factors were largely unsuccessful in sustaining the RED process. Read the full paper right here. 

These same principles go for Pulsara. You can have the best new software, process, or tool, but if your team views it as a "magic bullet," it will be doomed to fail. No such thing exists. Your teams need to instead view these tools as a piece of a new process that when embraced fully -- systemic changes and failures included -- can truly help your facility produce consistently better patient outcomes.